14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking to investors at a Goldman Sachs conference this week, Tim Cook ruled out the possibility of seeing an OLED display in any of the company’s upcoming products, citing an “awful” color saturation and low levels of brightness.
Answering a question about Apple's design choices, including the company’s decision on the iPhone 5 (4-inch) screen, Cook said, “I don’t want to say what we will do or won’t do.”
“The way companies compete is with two things, specs and price,” he explained. In the camera business people say, ‘I have the most megapixels.’ Do you know the speed of an AX processor? Does it really matter at the end of the day?”
The CEO reiterated his company’s stance, saying it prides itself on delivering only the best products, suggesting that Apple has to make a few compromises to get to that end result.
“You want a fabulous experience when you use the product. If you look at displays, some people are focused on size. There are a few other things about the display that are important,” Cook noted.
He brought up the OLED subject, saying, “Some people use OLED displays, but the color saturation is awful. If you buy things online, you should think twice before you depend on the color of the OLED display.”
Comparing OLEDs to Apple’s own Retina standard, Cook said his company’s screens were “twice as bright.”
“…That’s the only religion that we have, is that we must do something great. We want to enrich people’s lives. We sweat the details on those,” he said.
“I only bring these points up to say there are many attributes of a display. Apple sweats every detail. We want the best display. I think we’ve got it. I’m not going to comment on what we’re going to do in the future,” he concluded.
Editor’s note In answering the question regarding Apple’s choices in design and technology, Cook started with “I don’t want to say what we will do or won’t do.” A few dozen sentences later, he concluded with “I’m not going to comment on what we’re going to do in the future.”
See what he did there? OLED is one thing, screen size is another.