South Korean media reports Apple has signed a two-year deal with Samsung for curved OLED iPhone displays (via Digitimes).
According to ET News and Chosun Biz, Samsung will ship 70-90 million small-size OLED panels for Apple this year, making 30% of iPhone shipments in 2017 coming with curved OLED displays. Apple currently ships around 200 million iPhones per year.
To keep up with demand, Samsung Display is said to be converting one of its LCD factories in Asia to OLED, with the Korean company’s OLED production lines said to reach up to $8.8 billion USD in sales ($10 trillion KRW).
The report seems to corroborate what Nikkei reported earlier this week, noting Apple had placed an order for 70 million bendable OLED panels from Samsung. Despite being bitter smartphone rivals, Apple still relies on Samsung for parts, while the latter has the iPhone maker as one of its biggest customers.
Apple’s iPhone 8 is said to launch later this year, featuring an embedded Home button, an edge-to-edge 5.8-inch display with ‘Function’ area along the bottom, plus some sort of facial recognition technology.
