Ars Technica has taken a look at the possibility of Apple using OLED screens in their forth-coming tablet device. The odds don’t look good in favor of the OLED screen. Here’s what Ars had to say about it.
Ars caught up with Barry Young, Managing Director of the OLED Association, and asked him about the state of OLED in general and the Apple tablet rumors in specific.
The problem with the recent rumor that Apple is hoarding 10-inch OLEDs, Young explained, is that “there’s no real production of 10.1-inch panels” for anyone to hoard. If anyone were to produce a 10.1-inch panel, then it would have to be for a specific order. “I haven’t seen any of the OLED suppliers commit to that yet,” Young said of a hypothetical 10.1-inch panel production run.
According to the report only Samsung is currently offering active matrix OLED screens in mass quantity, and even then it could only put out around 150,000 10.1-inch units per month. Even then, this level of production could only be achieved if Samsung ignored all other existing orders for sizes other than 10.1-inch, and devoted all resources to producing that size for Apple.
Apple has a long tern agreement with LG for their display needs, but LG has only 10-15% of Samsung’s capacity to make OLED panels. So, the OLED industry simply couldn’t make enough displays to keep up with Apple’s demands, which means Apple could still introduce an OLED model of the tablet. It would just be insanely expensive. Like, $2,000 expensive. I doubt Apple would do this while offering a lower cost LCD alternative at the same launch.
I totally agree. The technology simply isn’t available in mass yet. Apple will skip it for now. I’d be very surprised if they do offer an OLED model.
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