Samsung & Interflex boost circuit board output for Apple's 'iPhone 8'
Two firms, Interflex and Samsung Electro-Mechanics, are reportedly boosting their spending on production of flexible printed circuit boards (FPCBs) specifically for Apple's upcoming iPhones, including the "iPhone 8," which should be the first iPhone with an OLED screen.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is spending $88 million on expanding its plant in Vietnam, while Inteflex is planning to make a similar investment of its own, The Korea Herald said on Monday, quoting another Korean publication, The Bell. Apart from Samsung and Interflex, Apple is expected to source FPCBs from a third firm -- BH -- which also recently grew production in Vietnam.
Orders for Samsung and Interflex will allegedly be decided when production starts in April or May.
About 60 million OLED-equipped iPhones should be produced this year, representing 40 percent of new devices, the Herald said. Adoption is forecast to double in 2018, and by 2019, Apple is predicted to use OLED in all its new models.
The basis for the latter claim is unknown, but in recent years Apple has taken a policy of gradually migrating high-end features to cheaper models. The 4.7-inch iPhone 7, for instance, now includes optical image stabilization, something that was previously reserved for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus.
Apple is expected to ship three new iPhones this fall, including the "iPhone 8," and two "7s" models using 4.7- and 5.5-inch LCDs like the iPhone 7. All three are expected to offer wireless charging, as well as faster wired charging via Lightning.
The "iPhone 8" will likely use a 5.8-inch OLED display, with about 0.7 inches of that being dedicated to virtual buttons replacing a physical one. It may also offer 3D facial recognition, iris scanning, and/or a new form of fingerprint sensor.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is spending $88 million on expanding its plant in Vietnam, while Inteflex is planning to make a similar investment of its own, The Korea Herald said on Monday, quoting another Korean publication, The Bell. Apart from Samsung and Interflex, Apple is expected to source FPCBs from a third firm -- BH -- which also recently grew production in Vietnam.
Orders for Samsung and Interflex will allegedly be decided when production starts in April or May.
About 60 million OLED-equipped iPhones should be produced this year, representing 40 percent of new devices, the Herald said. Adoption is forecast to double in 2018, and by 2019, Apple is predicted to use OLED in all its new models.
The basis for the latter claim is unknown, but in recent years Apple has taken a policy of gradually migrating high-end features to cheaper models. The 4.7-inch iPhone 7, for instance, now includes optical image stabilization, something that was previously reserved for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus.
Apple is expected to ship three new iPhones this fall, including the "iPhone 8," and two "7s" models using 4.7- and 5.5-inch LCDs like the iPhone 7. All three are expected to offer wireless charging, as well as faster wired charging via Lightning.
The "iPhone 8" will likely use a 5.8-inch OLED display, with about 0.7 inches of that being dedicated to virtual buttons replacing a physical one. It may also offer 3D facial recognition, iris scanning, and/or a new form of fingerprint sensor.
Comments
They still can't copy iOS and we all remember their surprise when the iPhone suddenly went 64bit even though Samsung made the chips.
They can copy the design all day long but if you don't have the tech, you can't totally copy something.
Possibly sound ethics. Perhaps just good business: if your semiconductor business leaks other people's commercial secrets then other people will quickly go elsewhere. Big corporations aren't as monolithic as we sometimes make them out to be: if you run the fab sub-business in Samsung then your bonuses depend on your performance, not the mobile phone business's performance, so you'd fight to keep a big customer ... like Apple. Either way, I wouldn't automatically assume that Apple's information gets leaked by its subcontractors (rogue employees on YouTube excepted).
A classic example is the Comer Airliner (metal fatigue aside). It has the engines mounted in the wing root. IT works and looked pretty good. Then along came the Boeing 707 with the engines on pylons. The only civil aircraft that followed the comet model since was Concorde. Everything else (Tri-jets excepted) use Engines on Pylons either under the wing or either side of the tail.
Apple meay well take Iris recognition in a different direction to those who have gone before.
As for the OLED display, it is well known that Apple have a very exacting spec for phone/tablet displays. The iPhone 7 shows that. They have driven the LCD tech to about as far as it can go. OLED's do have manufacturing difficulties especially when it comes to volumes. It could well have been impossible until now to produce an OLED screen to Apple's Spec in the Volumes that Apple want. We just don't know.
But to simply state that Apple is late to the market yet again without knowing the full story is just guessing. Neither you not I know the full story.
To me, a device is always more that the sum of the individual parts.
We shall have to wait and see.
Only 5 or 6 months to wait...