What is the Real Relationship between Apple Inc and Samsung?

By Carrie Tsai,  Last Updated: January 03, 2018

Apple Inc is heavily dependent on Samsung, especially in terms of design faceplates. Not at all surprised that Apple Inc plans to invest with LG and BOE to reduce their reliance on Samsung. Nevertheless, it is clear that it will not be over for a certain period of time.

Without doubt, the wishful thinking seems to have not been tweaked in the aspect of faceplates. Recently, according to South Korean media reports, Samsung Display panel manufacturer Samsung Display will supply 180 million to 200 million flexible OLED panels for Apple's iPhone handsets next year. And this year, Samsung supplies about 50 million OLED panels for the iPhone X, which means that next year's supply will be about 4 times this year. Based on the estimated $ 110 per unit by research firm IHS Market, these display panels are valued at $ 19.8 billion to $ 22 billion.

There is by no means that some handset manufacturers couldn't help peeking at OLED panels when it sales were so extensive. Recently, you may see messages stating saying that Japan's Sharp CEO Tai Jeng-wu requested the local government to promote the proposed alliance with OLED technology to compete with South Korea's Samsung and LG. It is reported that Sharp has invested 1 trillion yen for OLED panel production, and is still continuing. Samsung and LG dominate most of the OLED market in cell phones and batteries at present. Samsung had an absolute monopoly position because of iPhone X's OLED panels are also only from them this year and accounting for up to 95% of the market for small and medium size OLED panels.

Whereas, compared with the technology used by Samsung, JOLED printing technology have the benefit of low cost investment and low material loss. Once a cost reduction, it is expected to provide OLED panel at a lower price. In light of this, JOLED is planning to level the playing field with the weapons of price competitiveness. In effect, as the supplier of iPhone mobile phone screen, Apple has always been the biggest owner of JDI, and its revenue contribution exceeds more than half of the company's total business. Even Huawei, OPPO, millet is also an important customer, but the proportion is relatively small.  iPhone 8 adopted LCD panel but sluggish sales this year, in turn, with the strong demand for iPhone X OLED panel, which also exacerbated the financial deterioration of JDI speed, it is expected that such a situation will continue in the fourth quarter and even next year.