Back in April, we reported that the sixth generation iPhone could feature much thinner and lighter Sharp’s poly-silicon LCDs which would go into production at a dedicated facility developed by Sharp by the end of year 2012. Few days back, we published another report via Digitimes that Apple might have cancelled the iPad 3 launch in 2011 due to some “quality issues” with the Retina Display produced by Samsung. Today, a report from Reuters claims that Apple is ready to invest $1 billion in Sharp for manufacturing high quality Retina displays for iPhone 5 and iPad 3. All these facts clearly suggest Apple is all set up bid farewell to Samsung as the mainstream supplier.
According to the source:
We think it is highly possible that Apple will make an investment in Sharp’s Kameyama plant to the tune of around $1 billion in order to secure stable supply of screens for iPhones and iPads, analyst David Rubenstein said in the note.
It is important to note that Apple’s decision to hire Sharp could only be a move to affect Samsung since there has been a tension growing between the two giants due to the recent lawsuits over patent infringements from both sides. For those who don’t know, Samsung was recently appointed as Apple’s iPad 2 display supplier replacing LG electronics.
