Apple To Begin Making In-House Screens in 2024 in Shift Away From Samsung

Apple is planning to start using its own custom displays in mobile devices as early as 2024, an effort to reduce its reliance on technology partners like Samsung and LG and bring more components in-house. From a report: The company aims to begin by swapping out the display in the highest-end Apple Watches by the end of next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The screens upgrade the current OLED -- organic light-emitting diode -- standard to a technology called microLED, and Apple plans to eventually bring the displays to other devices, including the iPhone. The changes are part of a sweeping effort to replace Apple supplies with homegrown parts, an undertaking that will give the company more control over the design and capabilities of its products. The tech giant has dropped Intel chips in its Mac computers in favor of in-house designs and plans to do the same with the key wireless components in its iPhones.

screens will be SN locked an need an wipe to repla

[Joe_Dragon]

screens will be SN locked an need an full system wipe (DFU mode) to replace

RIP Samsung Corp.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sure to make Lee Jae-yong shit in his kimono.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sure to make Lee Jae-yong shit in his kimono.

Lee Jae-yong is Korean. Kimonos are worn in Japan. You are racist and a moron.

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[Monstieur]

I want every component of valuable Apple devices to be locked and signed with an audited unhackable chain of trust. A stolen iPhone or MacBook should be absolutely worthless even in parts. I don't care about reduced repairability. If I want that I'd buy some other brand that thieves don't care about.

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[sg_oneill]

I'm of split opinion on this.

I like the fact I can get parts (with a traceable lineage, the laptop thieves can get f****ed) third party to fix my older macs.

On the other hand, getting a laptop stolen is hell. My 2017 MBP was a terrible laptop (That was the year with the butterfly keyboard and that awful touchbar), but I had mine stolen about 3 months after spending a good $5K on a (reasonably) maxed out one. That hurt as it happened about 3 weeks after I lost my job [company collapse] and I didnt have insu

Re: screens will be SN locked an need an wipe to r

[SleepingEye]

Cute, you think the thieves won't figure out how to bypass it.

Re: screens will be SN locked an need an wipe to r

[EldoranDark]

Because a thief in a dark alley will take a minute to inspect your phone, work out it's not worth stealing and hand it back to you, only keeping your watch, wallet and sneakers. Oh wait, they'll just smash it on your head so you won't be able to call the cops right away. And then you won't be able to get a reasonably priced replacement part because Apple has the ecosystem locked down.

New process, new opportunity.

[jacks smirking reven]

I imagine with microLED being a feasible technology now the oppurtunity presented itself to vertically integrate display manufacture. With LCD and OLED spinning of a fabrication plant would be a costly endevour with a lot of the process being both secreative to the firms with decades of experience (LG, Samsung, BOE, Sharp) and probably a patent minefield to boot.

Even though it's somewhat new microLED probably has something of smaller cost of entry and also lets Apple be a market leader.

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[fermion]

Not to mention there is an all but abandoned facility in Wisconsin Apple can probably get cheap.

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[jacks smirking reven]

Did anything of note actually get built out there? All i ever heard was a ground breaking ceremony. Would be shocked if any manufacturing lines were every even designed, much less purchased.

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[fermion]

They built it. They hired some students. At cost of a billion to taxpayers.

Code words

[RitchCraft]

"an undertaking that will give the company more control over the design and capabilities of its products" - code for less repairable assemblies.

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[NoMoreACs]

"an undertaking that will give the company more control over the design and capabilities of its products" - code for less repairable assemblies.

Not code.

A permanent solution to global supply-chain headaches for that critical component.

Not to mention the promise to do some display innovation of their own; without having to share with companies that have their own agendas.

Bye bye China

[OrangAsm]

I'm glad the children of Cupertino will finally be employed.

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[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. If you think Apple won't be making these in China you are delusional. At best, they will move a small amount of production to some other third world shit hole country. Slave labor is of utmost importance if they want to maintain those high profit margins.

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[jobslave]

If you think ANY part of the manufacturing process will be in the USA, I have some land to sell you and I'll let you have it for a special price I'm not offering to anyone else. Ocean front, right in the middle of Kansas, views as far as you can see.

Location of production?

[fbobraga]

+1 informative (land to spare?) /s

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[BetterSense]

With many companies on-shoring semiconductor production, and Apple themselves diversifying production to countries other than China, this is not as certain as in the past.

Micron is building the US's first and only commodity memory fabs in the US. Pretty soon you will be able to buy Crucial memory with chips made in Idaho or New York. TSMC of course are building their first US fabs also. Apple building displays in the US could definitely happen.

"...more components in-house..."

[willoughby]

And these "in-house" parts will be manufactured where?

Re: "...more components in-house..."

[fbobraga]

Good question (don't forget repairabily ;p)

We'll See

[organgtool]

There are two different methods for creating MicroLEDs. One method uses inorganic LEDs printed on a silicon chip to create a screen with insane pixel density. However, those chips have proven difficult to scale up in size and in the past, many prototypes at trade shows have had magnifying glasses to help viewers see the image. The other method of producing MicroLEDs is placing traditional inorganic LEDs on a substrate, similar to OLED, but there have been a ton of challenges shrinking the pixel size down to be able to create screens small enough for even a large-sized television. Manufacturing yields are rumored to be incredibly low, which is the speculated reason that the screens Samsung shows off with this technology are made up of a bunch of modular panels placed extremely close together. And I haven't heard of any improvements in this form of technology, even at CES 2023, so I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever see the light of day (at least anytime soon).

Traditionally, MicroLED screens have either been too small or too large to create anything useful. We'll see if Apple has made progress with this technology. I believe the technology they purchased from LuxVue is silicon-based LEDs, so it would make sense that they start with the smallest screen in their lineup. I wouldn't be too surprised if they were able to release a watch in 2024 with MicroLED tech, but scaling that up to the size of an iPhone would probably be a much bigger challenge.

Both forms of MicroLED are self-emitting, so they have extremely high contrast ratios. They're also much brighter than OLEDs, are far more resistant to burn-in, and don't lose their brightness over time nearly as fast as OLEDs. From a theoretical standpoint, MicroLEDs have almost all of the advantages you could want in a screen technology and virtually no disadvantages. Therefore, any improvements in this technology are exciting to watch.

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[Deal In One]

Am of two minds about what you said.

On one hand, any improvement to technology is good.

On the other hand, it's Apple - if they manage to do something great with MicroLEDs, I think there is a decent chance they will not want anyone else to licence that tech from them, or to sell panels to others.

I would rather it's someone like LG, Samsung, etc who are known to at the least sell panels to everyone interested that gets to make any major breakthrus.

Makes no sense

[big-giant-head]

They will still be made in China. At least if they stick with samsung, I believe many of those are still made in Korea and Vietnam. So they are increasing their dependence on China at a time that Chinese supply chains are all snarled up. Could be a major mistake!

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[Stolovaya]

Not necessarily. There are other countries with cheap labor that can be exploited.

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[Waccoon]

You're assuming Apple isn't the one snarling up the supply chains.

Remember what happened with e-IPS panels? Lots of companies were starting to sell them and they were awesome. Then Apple decided they wanted that tech all for themselves, bought out the rights, and everybody else's panels disappeared from the market immediately and stayed that way for years. I bought a Dell e-IPS monitor for $250 right before this happened, and it went up to $400 overnight -- assuming you could find one in stock. Everybod

Apple's Roadmap

[Vomitgod]

1. Vendors implement something innovative
2. Apple - sit and watch
3. Apple - Months Later copy what others did
4. Publish to the media their courage and how they invented something new.

Good Luck with patents.

[thegarbz]

The idea that you can just develop a technology that has decades of R&D behind it from zero is a fantasy. You may not be paying Samsung or LG to make you your device but you will definitely be paying them a small fortune for the use of their patents.