Sharp gets $1.2bn from Apple for iPhone display plant
Paper says it's joining Toshiba in iWindfall
First Toshiba, now Sharp is a Japanese display maker said by local reports to be partnering with Apple on a enormo-factory to punch out iPhone screens.
Once again, Japan's Nikkei makes the claim, stating that Apple will be coughing up ¥100bn (£768m/$1.2bn) to support Sharp in its construction endeavours.
Apple will also buy the bulk of the new plant's output, the paper said, by way of Reuters.
Interestingly, Nikkei reckons it didn't get the name wrong first time round: the Sharp deal, it said, is in addition to the Toshiba factory investment, which likewise is being queued up to punch out iDevice panels.
Sharp's new lines will go live in H2 2012, Toshiba's in H2 2011. ®
COMMENTS
One reason
It's the one way to differentiate your products in this day and age. Have something nobody else has.
Everyone tends to plump for the same display sizes and resolutions and Apple want something better. Hence retina display is higher resolution than most other phones. It might not be OLED but the resolution makes up for that.
iDevice for certain?
I heard nothing more confirming than a "display manufacturing plant" and no details on the specific panels or sizes either would make.
I know Apple is pushing to get tech used in their 11 and 13" MBAs into larger laptops and desktops, I'd be very surprised if a significant portion of the investment did not go there as well.
Screen issues
Working from the phone industry we never had these types of shortages for the iPhone, one reason I have heard for this is that Apple have had an amazingly high failure rate at the factory for their so called "retina" displays. This seems to be a solution for that problem but I would have thought just re-designing the phone to fix the couple of major problems with the currant design would be cheaper. If the Sharp factory isn't going live till 2012 that means that iPhone fans wont be able to get their hands on super AMOLED or better technology till at least the end 2012 if not later. Seems an odd move to me...
