14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has agreed to pay GT Advanced Technologies $578 million / €430 million to have the company build sapphire screens for its upcoming iPhone, with DigiTimes Research expecting the phone to sell in the tens of millions.
An excerpt from a Chinese-language Digitimes Research report reveals that “US-based crystal growth solution and equipment provider GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) has announced that Apple will pre-pay US$578 million to secure sapphire supply.”
The news certainly bodes well with Apple’s own confirmation from earlier this week that the company was building a facility to churn out sapphire glass.
Apple released a statement, saying, “We are proud to expand our domestic manufacturing initiative with a new facility in Arizona, creating more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction.”
“This new plant will make components for Apple products and it will run on 100% renewable energy from day one, as a result of the work we are doing with SRP to create green energy sources to power the facility,” the giant said.
The Cupertino-based company currently uses sapphire glass in minute iPhone parts, like the camera lenses and Touch ID fingerprint sensors.
An investment of $578 million / €430 million undoubtedly means Apple has larger-scale plans with the material (i.e. expanding to screens), even though GTAT didn’t directly mention a new iPhone model.
DigiTimes Research estimates that “GTAT will be able to use the funds to set up additional sapphire production capacity which will produce enough sapphire to make 5-inch screen covers for 33.79-50.56 million iPhones a year.”
Editor’s note This, of course, doesn’t confirm that the next-generation iPhone will have a 5-inch display. DigiTimes Research analysts merely used the 5-inch specification based on rumors that the iPhone 6 will have a larger screen.