Apple, TSMC Deepen Collaboration (II)

choi

Today's news first.

(1) Joseph Tsai, Apple Plans Micro LED Panels for Small- and Large-Size Devices, Says Digitimes Research. DigiTimes, Apr 3, 2018
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180403VL200.html
(Apple's microLED: small-sized for Apple Watch, large-sized for MacBooks; Apple has received support from TSMC for the making of small-size ones, according to Digitimes Research's senior analyst Luke Lin, citing his upstream sources)

Quote: The Apple Watch micro LED panel may enter mass production in the second half of 2018 or in 2019, while the large-size one may enter mass production in 2019 or later, stated Lin. * * * The costs of the new micro LED panels are 400-600% higher than those of the existing Apple Watch's same-size OLED panels, Lin estimates.

(2) Mark Gurman, Apple Is Secretly Developing Its Own Screens for the First Time, Bloomberg, Mar 18, 2018
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... ace-samsung-screens

Quote:

"MicroLED screens use different light-emitting compounds than the current OLED displays and promise to make future gadgets slimmer, brighter and less power-hungry.

"The [microLED] screens are far more difficult to produce than OLED displays, and the company almost killed the project a year or so ago, the people say.

"The news crushed Universal Display Corp shares Monday [Mar 19, 2018; same day display makers in Asia also fell, though not as sharply], sending them down as much as 16 percent. Universal Display makes key technology and owns some OLED intellectual property

"The California facility is too small for mass-production

"The Apple Watch [OLED] screen is made by LG Display. * * * The iPhone X, Apple's first OLED phone, uses Samsung technology.

"The secret initiative, code-named T159, is overseen by executive Lynn Youngs, an Apple veteran

"The 62,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, the first of its kind for Apple, is located on an otherwise unremarkable street in Santa Clara, California, a 15-minute drive from the Apple Park campus in Cupertino and near a few other unmarked Apple offices.

"Apple inherited the intellectual property for that process when it purchased startup LuxVue in 2014.  About a year after that acquisition, Apple opened a display research lab (described internally as a 'Technology Center') in Taiwan [a photo caption in this report says Longtan 桃園市 龍潭區]. In a test to see if the company could pull off in-house display manufacturing, engineers in Taiwan first built a small number of LCD screens using Apple technology. They were assembled at the Santa Clara factory and retrofitted into iPhone 7 prototypes. Apple executives tested them, then gave the display team the go-ahead to move forward with the development of Apple-designed MicroLED screens. * * * In late 2017, for the first time, engineers managed to manufacture fully functional MicroLED screens for future Apple Watches * * * still at least a couple of years away from reaching consumers

"The [microLED] screens are notably brighter than the current OLED Watch displays, and engineers have a finer level of control over individual colors, according to a person who has seen them.

"While the smartphone is Apple’s cash cow, there is precedent for new screen technologies showing up in the Apple Watch first. When it was introduced in 2014, the Apple Watch had an OLED screen. The technology finally migrated to the iPhone X last year.

"Creating MicroLED screens is extraordinarily complex. Depending on screen size, they can contain millions of individual pixels. Each has three sub-pixels: red, green and blue LEDs. Each of these tiny LEDs must be individually created and calibrated. Each piece comes from what is known as a 'donor wafer' and then are mass-transferred to the MicroLED screen. Early in the process, Apple bought these wafers from third-party manufacturers like Epistar Corp and Osram Licht AG but has since begun 'growing' its own LEDs to make in-house donor wafers. The growing process is done inside a clean room at the Santa Clara facility.

Note:
(a) Universal Display Corp (UDC; founded in 1994 by Sherwin Seligsohn and based in Ewing Township (on northern border of Trenton), New Jersey; holders of OLED patent from Princeton that supplies Samsung, LG etc; no manufacturing)  company website.
(b) Selig (name)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selig_(name)

is an adjective in modern German (the first letter s in lower case).
(c) This report does not mention TSMC.
(d) There is an en.wikipedia.org page for microLED, which does not explain better between this technology and OLED.