iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
7 Facebook x .com Reddit Rumour assessment 馃 It's possible that the iPhone 16 could have even thinner bezels, but it doesn't look like any vendor has successfully gotten Apple's approval for it.
After the introduction of the iPhone X, Apple began offering consumers thinner bezels on the iPhone and eventually began promoting even thinner versions. While the company wants to go even further with the iPhone 16, the supply chain is having a hard time keeping up.
As reported by The Elec in an article on OLED displays, Apple wants to use a border reduction structure (BRS) on the bottom bezel of the iPhone 16 OLED display.
The manufacturing challenge is that the reduction in thickness requires greater precision, and the circuitry under the bezel must be placed more densely than in previous designs. Some circuit wires also need to be bent downwards, which makes displays much more difficult to design and manufacture.
The complex design change is already creating problems for Apple's usual suppliers. It is alleged that so far no one has been able to produce OLED displays for the iPhone using this technology at the level that Apple wants.
On March 20, there were rumors that thanks to the use of BRS, the iPhone 16 line will have the thinnest frames. This report stated that thinning the bottom panel was problematic due to heat dissipation issues.
Cost cutting
The report also discusses changes at LG Display regarding its own OLED display supply chain for iPhone 16. The company will reportedly split sourcing of display driver chips (DDI) for potential cost savings.
A display driver IC (DDI) is a chip that drives the display pixels through a thin film transistor, an important part of an OLED display.
LG Display previously relied on LX Semicon for DDI supplies, but it is said to start accepting chips from Novatech later in 2024.
LG's move is believed to be related to production costs. -reducing progress, introducing competition into your own supply chain. This comes at the same time as LG Display is seeing growth in OLED iPhone shipments, which is estimated to increase by 20% year-on-year.
Despite Apple's theoretical increase in orders from LG, Samsung Display is still expected to have the largest number of iPhone OLED display shipments among suppliers. While LG is reported to have shipped 52.5 million OLED iPhones in 2023, Samsung Display is believed to be at around 100 million units.
The move could hurt LX Semicon, as it suggests its orders are likely to decline overall if Novatech's DDI shipments are large, even if LG Display's production increases.
Samsung Display and BOE will keep their DDI chains the same in 2024 as they were in 2023. LX Semicon serves BOE, and Samsung Electronics System LSI supplies chips to Samsung Display.
While The Elec doesn't necessarily have a good reputation when it comes to device features, its reports on supply chain activity are generally much better and quite reliable.
Cost reduction is a critical operation for display manufacturers, especially given the potentially thin margins.
A March rumor claimed that Samsung Display had abandoned production of displays for the new iPhone SE 4. While Apple wanted the price per display to be around $25, Samsung apparently couldn't go below $30. per panel.
Evaluating Rumors
馃
Possibly
Follow AppleInsider on Google News
