Abstract:
With the official release of Apple’s first foldable screen flagship iPhone Duo, the supply chain behind its sophisticated hardware has gradually emerged. According to the latest supply chain news from the display industry, Samsung Display has officially signed a three-year exclusive supply agreement with Apple.
During this period, it will exclusively supply folding OLED displays for iPhone Duo and subsequent iterations. The purchase cost of a single panel paid by Apple is as high as approximately US$250, making it one of the most expensive hardware components of the machine besides the core chipset.
As an ultra-high-end exploration device with a starting price of US$1,999, iPhone Duo is equipped with an ultra-thin flexible inner screen that measures 7.8 inches when unfolded. Industry information shows that the screen uses Samsung Display’s latest generation top-level luminescent material system code-named “M16” for the first time. Compared with previous OLED light-emitting substrates, the M16 material has achieved leaps and bounds in key dimensions such as screen peak excitation brightness, color purity, light-emitting element anti-attenuation life, and comprehensive power consumption control. It not only meets Apple's stringent indicators for Dolby Vision high dynamic image quality, but also provides the underlying physical foundation for nearly invisible crease control and high energy efficiency performance.
The purchase price of a single panel is as high as US$250, which directly reflects the extremely high barriers and high cost of manufacturing top-notch foldable flexible screens. Since the foldable panel not only involves complex ultra-thin flexible glass (UTG) composite bonding, ultra-high-precision micro-polarizing layer optimization, and repeated bending fatigue testing, but also suffers from relatively high scrappage losses under strict initial quality control, its manufacturing cost is several times that of a conventional straight-panel smartphone OLED panel. This high material expenditure directly constitutes the core factor that keeps the overall BOM hardware cost of the iPhone Duo high and supports its high price of nearly US$2,000.
This three-year exclusive supply agreement also reflects Apple’s rare compromise on its procurement strategy of key cutting-edge components. In its mature parts supply chain management in the past, Apple has attached great importance to supply chain diversification (Multi-sourcing), and usually introduces two to three suppliers to bid and lower prices to offset the risk of supply interruption. However, in the field of foldable OLED panels, although manufacturers such as BOE and LG Display also have certain flexible screen manufacturing technologies, Samsung Display is still almost the only supplier in the global market that can fully meet Apple's extremely demanding ultra-low crease requirements, micro-nano texture surface treatment, high-precision Apple Pencil touch layer integration, and stable high output yields on a mass production scale of millions of units.
Industry analysts pointed out that Samsung Display’s three-year exclusive supply qualification not only established an impenetrable commercial moat in the upstream of folding displays, but also provided Samsung Electronics with generous upstream profits in the face of cross-border competition from Apple. Although Apple is trying its best to compete for dominance in the folding screen market with iPhone Duo in terms of complete terminals, at the core underlying component level, it is still difficult to get rid of its high dependence on this Korean competitor in the short term. As the phone is scheduled to start pre-sale and global delivery in October, the yield ramp and full-load output pace of Samsung's display flexible production line will directly determine whether the global supply of iPhone Duo can meet the strong market demand in the early stages of release.
Comments