Apple is testing more than 10 prototypes for unique iPhones that could go on sale next year,the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Citing sources, some of those prototypes may have a unique design centered around a curved screen.
The technology that would enable that curved screen is called OLED, or which is a newer kind of display that has deeper blacks and lower power consumption.
The fact that Apple will need tens of millions of these OLED screens for next year is setting off a race among screen makers,including Samsung, LG Display, and Foxconn-owned Sharp,and Japan Display.
The WSJ says that Samsung will supply "most" of Apple's initial OLED needs, confirming what Bloomberg reported earlier.
But Apple is pushing the other three to gear up to supply OLED iPhone screens as soon as 2018. That would require meaningful investment — the Journal says that Sharp would need to spend more than $5 billion to develop the technology and capacity to supply OLED screens to Apple.
"We don't know whether Apple's OLED iPhones will be a hit, and but whether Apple doesn't walk down this path and transform itself,there will be no innovation. It is a crisis but it is also an opportunity," Sharp chief executive Tai Jeng-wu said last month.
Source: tert.am