14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung, LG and Sharp are among the largest display suppliers in the smartphone industry, but a large percent of their production is focusing on panels for iPhones. Apple is the most important customer for these display suppliers, which sparks a bit of a rivalry between them.
In fact, it appears that Samsung and LG are now fully engaged in a war to obtain from Apple as many OLED orders as possible. Sharp, the underdog in this battle, has already suggested that Apple plans to switch to OLED panels for the next-generation iPhone.
Now LG Display made a huge investment in flexible OLED panels throughout the year, increasing its facility and retooling half of it specifically for the production of this type of display. The total amount of money LG Display poured into its facilities to ramp up production of flexible OLED panels next year reached $1.75 billion US dollars.
On the other hand, Samsung Display has reportedly invested 5.15 billion US dollars in facilities from the beginning of this year to Q3, the additional investment will raise Samsung's total investment in OLEDs of this yer to around 9.7 billion US dollars.
So, basically, LG and Samsung have invested in their display divisions around 11.45 billion US dollars for flexible OLED panels, and that's just this year alone. That's how much these companies treasure Apple as a customer.
Since Apple usually sells around 200 million iPhones every year, even if just half of these iPhones use OLED panels, the Cupertino-based company will need to order 100 million OLED panels each year.
Sources in the industry claim that Samsung Display might receive all orders for OLEDs for the iPhone 8, but we doubt LG Display and Sharp's panels division won't receive any contracts.
On a side note, display industry predicts that OLED panels will overpass the half of total displays for the iPhone starting 2018, which translates into even more orders that LG, Samsung and Sharp might need to fulfill.