BOE Technology Group Company Limited will supply OLED display to Apple for iPhone 12 displays. A report by Patently Apple claims that after passing certification, the Chinese manufacturer will begin shipment as early as December 2020. Currently, all models of iPhone 12 line-up are equipped with OLED display provided by Samsung and LG.
BOE is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of LED, LCD, OLED, and flexible displays for various TV and smartphone sets. The manufacturer is behind Samsung in the OLED panel market with 5.9%. As reported by The Elec, after failing Apple’s OLED display certification twice this year, BOE has now passed its validation for iPhone 12 display.
BOE to supply iPhone 12 OLED display
Quoting upstream and downstream information of the industry supply chain, Patently Apple writes that OLED demand will surge in the coming years and it’s estimated that by 2022, the demand will reach 100%.
In 2019, 25% of iPhone sales use OLED, this year it has expanded to 50%, and it will increase to more than 80% in 2021. In 2022, OLED screens will account for 100%.
In 2022, the proportion of iPhone OLED screens will reach 100%. For the whole year, RUNTO predicts that Apple’s OLED iPhone sales will reach 100 million units. In 2021, Apple will put on the market the largest OLED iPhone ever. The total shipments of the new iPhone 13 products and the old iPhone 12 products released in 2020 will grow by more than 60%, reaching 160 to 180 million units.
Data provided by RunTo reveals that, currently, BOE supplies A-Si displays for entry-level Macbook and iPad and as demand for OLED panels for iPhone will surge in the coming years, the Chinese manufacturer would be Apple’s third partner to meet that demand.
BOE supplies OLED displays to all Chinese smartphone OEMs including Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo and will end up shipping approximately 40 million units in 2020.
In the first half of 2020, according to data from RUNTO, the world’s major panel makers shipped 92M of flexible OLED panels for smartphones, a sharp increase of 36% year-on-year. BOE accounted for 16.2% of flexible OLED shipments. Samsung led the market with 71%, according to RUNTO.
OLED panels are lighter and thinner and emit visible light, ideal for low light conditions. It is reported that 2022 iPad Pro will be equipped with an OLED display and iPhone 13 will have an LPTO OLED always-on display like the Apple Watch Series 5 and later. Having said that, BOE will approximately supply 5% of iPhone display panels and the biggest portion will still be provided by Samsung.
BOE’s contribution to the iPhone line-up in 2021 is only expected to reach 10 million units, with LG supplying 40 million units and Samsung getting the lions share of OLED orders between 110-130 million units.
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