Apple has decided against making its own microLED Apple Watch displays
Less than a month after Apple abandoned its plans for the Apple Car, the tech giant has decided to bail on its initiative to design its own microLED screens for the Apple Watch.
Apple Watch Ultra
The project, which was first discovered in 2023, was designed to reduce its reliance on partners such as Samsung and LG. The company had even built its own screen manufacturing facility in Santa Clara, California, near Apple Park.
The company would have swapped the Samsung-produced OLED display for its own microLED. Apple would then likely have brought the screens to other devices, such as the iPhone.
However, the cost and complexity of the project were deemed untenable, and the project was scrapped, sources told Bloomberg. The screens are difficult to produce in sufficient quantities, and the company still relied on outside partners for mass production tasks.
According to the report, Apple has eliminated several dozen roles and is restructuring the teams responsible for display engineering. It has also axed positions at the Santa Clara manufacturing center.
In early February, rumors were circulating that Apple had pushed back or canceled the microLED Apple Watch project. Friday's news comes after long-time Apple supplier Osram told its investors that a large customer had canceled microLED orders for a wearable.
Current Apple Watch screens run Apple about $38 per unit. Apple's simulations of manufacturing and estimates of production yields were rumored to mean that an Apple Watch Ultra 3 screen with microLED would cost $150 to make.
Other microLED projects are said to remain intact. Timelines remain unclear, however.
In February, Apple abandoned Project Titan, the codename used to refer to developing its own electric vehicle. Many employees referred to the decade-long project as an inevitable failure and a "titanic disaster."
Rumor Score: Likely
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Comments
Whether they need to contract that out to Qualcomm or be it in-house, whatever the best business arrangement, I just hope they can push it over the finish line.
What I'd like to be improved:
1. Wearability. This basically is a product class issue, affecting all wristwatches that I could use. The presence of the sensor glass and the rubber band can get irritating on my skin. I alternately wear it on my left and right wrists to address it when it gets worse. I'd like to get an Ultra or a steel Watch, but the increased weight has me worried about skin irritation. Wondering how it will go. I exercise everyday, and my Series 4 is washed after every exercise session. Unfortunately, not much can be done here. Might have to buy an aluminum model instead. Not sure if a 3 dimensional or 3D conformal band can help my skin irritation issues.
2. I have to do some research how well the fabric bands respond to washing. If I use them during exercised, they have to be washed, preferably with the washer. What's people's experience with this? I will likely try more than the single rubber band with this new Watch.
3. UI improvements. I like the double pinch, but hit rate is about 50% on the Series 4. The 2023 and 2024 models will be better. Apple should really lean into the a UI design where it is operable entirely through discrete inputs from the digital crown, hand gestures, and as a last resort, touch, resulting in discrete UI events. So essentially, get rid of variable scrolling and only use pagination or highlighted/hover selections. Make the UI predominately vertical pages. Make more of the accessibility gestures the default. Double pinch was a start, but single pinch, double and single fist clench, and wrist-leveling or wrist-turning can hopefully be possible as normal Watch operation. The point with taking away variable scrolling is that inputs into the Watch are sloppy and scrolling variably is difficult. Making it button input like should further improve usability.
4. Just make it an iCloud client independent of the iPhone. Make the Watch.app, Fitness.app and Health.app iCloud web apps. You can use an iPhone to activate it, onboard it, etc, but you should be able add your Apple ID right from the Watch and it loads and syncs from the cloud.
The two stack OLEDs that are rumored to be in the new iPad Pros is going to be very interesting see, any day now. Apple will say they are the best displays in the world. The tandem stack design promises to be more power efficient, brighter, and have less risks for burn in. All the things microLED promises. If it pans out, microLED for displays smaller than a computer monitor might be dead for a while.
So, it is truly a huge benefit if the existing OLED matures to be good enough to be just as good as a the promise of new microLED tech. This is what is really bad about how rumors are treated. All these OEMs are constantly timing what tech to use as they are being develop. Most of the time, evolving existing tech turns out better than the brand new thing. The rumors tell an incorrect narrative of linear progression. Rarely happens that way. Apple and all other OEMs are continually balancing competing technologies for every single product along at least cost-schedule-quality set of axes.
On the subject of the Apple Watch, I've been wondering if Apple could do a two-for with their displays. They could use OLEDoS displays (Apple calls them micro-OLED). It won't need the PPI like on the Vision Pro, but perhaps they can use the silicon substrate infrastructure used it to manufacture OLEDoS displays for Watches. Have Apple Watches use 650 ppi OLEDoS displays. Have the mass economies of scale drive down OLEDoS tech. They then can take advantage and use this supply chain to fab 1300 ppi displays for $1500 Vision products.
2) Apple has had an opportunity to include cellular in their Macs for a long time. There was even a PowerBook with cellular they had made to test a long time ago that I think popped up on eBay. I was someone that would've jumped at the change, especially over the large and annoying USB-A attachment I had for my PowerBook. But now I'm not sure I'd do that since I always have my iPhone with me and it's so simple to tether to my iPhone as a personal hotspot. This also includes my spouse's hotspot as we're on the same iCloud Family Sharing plan. With this being a non-issue in 2024 I know that I'm certainly not going to pay for 2 extra cellular data connections when the iPhones are great for this.
Like any company, they do R&D in many different areas and a few of those things at some point become products and everything else is further developed or just tossed for whatever reason. My feeling on the Apple Car was way too large of a product and not enough of a profit margin that enough people would buy it. It made no sense to me. Apple making their own screens? That was never going to happen.
But, if they built their own modem, reduced the costs of LTE/5G licensing, they can bring the costs down to $150 to $200, making it more attractive for buyers, and with higher uptake, it makes the worthwhile.
On the other hand, built-in cellular modems in PC laptops aren't that common either. You have wonder why this is? It could price. It could be not enough buyers want it? It could be a feature that doesn't sell laptops? The carriers would charge too much for data plans.