Apple has been working on the development and manufacturing of microLED displays for years. Now, it seems that the company is finally closing in on producing these products for retail availability. However, despite the excitement surrounding this technology, there are concerns regarding Apple owning important intellectual property around microLED tech.
According to Nikkei Asia, Apple will be mass producing microLED displays for the Apple Watch and iPhone handsets. The idea behind this move is to reduce reliance on suppliers, such as Samsung, which is currently a major source of OLED panels for existing Apple products. The benefits for Apple are clear, as the company will be able to reduce its reliance on third parties, differentiate its watches and phones from the competition, and take advantage of the various performance benefits of microLED as a panel technology.
The Advantages of MicroLED Technology
MicroLED technology has several advantages over OLED displays. For starters, microLED is less prone to burn-in than OLED, which continues to be a concern in OLED displays. Additionally, microLED is brighter, can be made into thinner panels, has faster response times, and offers better viewing angles. In theory, microLED is the ultimate flat panel display technology.
The Challenges of Producing MicroLED Displays
Despite the advantages of microLED technology, productionizing it has been a major challenge. The technology is extremely expensive to make, partly because existing manufacturing processes require each microLED subpixel to be physically placed on the display substrate. In a 4K panel, this requires placing no fewer than 24 million individual LEDs. Even using automated processes, this is a nightmare in terms of manufacturing costs and quality control.
It is widely thought that Apple has spent around a billion dollars trying to make microLED commercially viable, and if the latest reports are to be believed, they may have finally cracked it. The first Apple product with microLED will be a watch in 2025, with the iPhone following a year or two later. Currently, microLED is limited to large displays aimed at commercial use and priced at many tens of thousands of dollars, even at the low end. Therefore, microLED in a consumer watch or phone would be a major achievement.
The Potential Impact of Apple’s Advances in MicroLED Technology
The potential risk here is that Apple ends up owning a load of patents critical to producing microLED displays at consumer price levels, in effect restricting the technology to its own products. This could have a major impact on the rest of the industry, and as a result, there is caution surrounding the impact of any Apple-driven advances in microLED technology. Nevertheless, the mass production of microLED displays is a major step forward for Apple and the display technology industry as a whole.
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