Seeking to lower production costs and ramp up the sales of its OLED-based iPhone models, Apple is said to be negotiating reduction in the price of OLED display panels with Samsung, Digitimes is reporting. Citing industry source, the report adds that the Cupertino tech giant is asking Samsung to reduce the unit price of its OLED panels to US $100, down from US $110.
Last year, Apple bought about 50 million OLED panels from Samsung Display. In 2018 however, the iPhone maker is expected to purchase over 100 million OLED panels from the South Korean company, with 25 million to be used by the current iPhone X and the remaining 75 million for the next-generation 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch OLED models that will debut later this year.
It is believed that the OLED panel accounts for about one-third of the total production cost of an iPhone X, which is currently experiencing much lower sales than expected.
“Apple appears to uphold its strategy to continue promoting OLED models. The use of the OLED panels should not be considered the culprit for the slower-than-expected sales of the iPhone X, as other vendors have also launched OLED models that have been selling well, commented the sources.
Meanwhile, other sources indicated that prices of smartphone-used OLED panels are likely to go down soon as OLED panel makers in China are likely to cut their prices in order to keep their production lines running.”
A recent survey found that legacy iPhone models are selling better than the new ones, as they seem to offer many of the same features at a much better price point.
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“legacy iPhone models are selling better than the new ones, as they seem to offer many of the same features at a much better price” Not only that, they’re lighter and less likely to shatter since they don’t have glass backs, and have headphone jacks and touchID. You lose a lot with the new iPhones.
Only iPhones pre-Phone 7 have headphone jacks. And they’ll be obsolete very soon,
Apple still sells the iPhone 6s brand new with headphone jack. The the new iPad has a headphone jack. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have headphone jacks even though they got rid of a whole bunch of other useful ports. Apple must think people use headphones or they wouldn’t have included the ports on so many of their new and current products. And they’d be correct. The only weird thing is that they removed it from their phones for “bigger barometric vents”
I would love to see these negotiations… “You need to drop your price $10 a piece even though we’re going to dump you as soon as we can find someone else that can do it. We’ve been looking for a year and a half and still can’t find anyone, so drop the price or else!”