Apple to Begin Making In-House Screens in 2024 in Shift Away from Samsung
bloomberg.comI suspect this to be an attempt to get better negotiation against manufacturers rather than a serious attempt to overhaul the supply chain.
Why? Wouldn’t this be consistent with their desire to build AR? Displays are a pretty key differentiator.
Desire itself doesn't necessarily justify billions of dollars of OPEX.
This is what they did with their cellular modems
JS-free archive link:
I'm not understanding something.
Apple wants to stop relying on manufacturers A and B. So they develop a new display and the requisite manufacturing process. But then they are going to have manufacturer C take over? What?
It’s one thing to rely on someone for manufacturing than to rely on someone for research/design/patents and manufacturing. In theory once Apple gets this project up and going they can have multiple manufacturers (if they want) and they would always have the option to manufacturer in house in the future.
It’s like their CPUs and TMSC versus using a Qualcomm Snapdragon. Sure, TMSC is manufacturing Apple Silicon, but Apple always has the option to port their design to a competitors node process or even spin up their own fab if needed (highly unlikely but possible).
Screw me on margins too much and I'll materialize a competitor for you out of thin air.
MicroLED tech is exciting. In theory it has most of the benefits of OLED (per pixel light control = crazy high contrast) and none of the downsides (burn in). They also claim to have better colours, lifespan and lower energy consumption than OLED. It will be neat to see the tech finally commercialized in the consumer space.