Since Samsung is the biggest manufacturer of small-to-medium sized OLED panels, Apple has no other option than to go into business with its rival and source OLED panels for the iPhone 8 from Samsung. Since Apple sells millions of units of the iPhone, Samsung will have to work hard to ensure that it can meet Apple's demand.
According to a new report out of South Korea, Samsung Display will operate 7 of its 6th generation flexible OLED lines on full scale this month. This will lead to a seven-fold increase in production capacity of iPhone panels this year. The production numbers will swell from 15,000 panels per month from last year to 105,000 panels per month this year.
It's not like Samsung hasn't been preparing for this. While it normally invested around $4 billion annually in its factory and back-end process lines in Vietnam, the company doubled its average investment last year to $8 billion. It has also invested $7.72 billion in the display plant in Vietnam so far this year.
This particular facility previously produced OLED panels that were only used for Samsung's own smartphones. Apple will be the second major customer after Samsung Electronics to source OLED panels from this plant.
If all production lines operate at an operation rate of 100 percent with a 100 percent yield, Samsung Display will produce nearly 124 million 6-inch and 130 million 5.8-inch panels respectively.
