Apple and TSMC Team Up on Micro-OLED Panel Deal

[Jet_ski]

Summary

Apple has reached a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in order to develop  ultra-advanced display technology, likely for the augmented reality products it has in development. That’s according to a report Wednesdayfrom Nikkei Asia.

The deal will entail the development of micro OLED displays, and represents a partnership between two companies that have long worked together. TSMC is long supplied chips to Apple, including for iPhones. 

The companies are teaming up, per the Nikkei report, because “micro OLED displays are not built on glass substrates like the conventional LCD screens in smartphones and TVs, or OLED displays used in high-end smartphones. Instead, these new displays are built directly onto wafers—the substrates that semiconductors are fabricated on.”

 

Quotes

Quote

“Panel players are good at making screens bigger and bigger, but when it comes to thin and light devices like AR glasses, you need a very small screen,” a source with “direct information on the micro OLED R&D project” told Nikkei. ”Apple is partnering with TSMC to develop the technology because the chipmaker’s expertise is making things ultra-small and good, while Apple is also leveraging panel experts’ know-how on display technologies.”

 

My thoughts

I called a while back but I didn’t think Apple would make their own panels; I thought they’d by it from LG or Sony.

 

Whelp. There goes my future income.

 

Sources

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/apple-and-tsmc-team-micro-oled-panel-deal-177977

 

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Apple-partners-with-TSMC-to-develop-ultra-advanced-displays

[Spindel]

Confused, should I put my money in Apple stock or TSMC stock or both?

[CephDigital]

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

Confused, should I put my money in Apple stock or TSMC stock or both?

[bcredeur97]

microLED or microOLED ? 

[Doobeedoo]

Hmm, so still an OLED tech before microLED then huh.

[Spindel]

41 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

microLED or microOLED ? 

 

8 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Hmm, so still an OLED tech before microLED then huh.

 

59 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

OLEDs? I think this was their typo. Micro LEDs makes a ton of sense, but OLEDs are completely outside their area of expertise.

I read somewhere that it in fact is MicroOLED and not MicroLED that is the deal here. Basically just a different way of making OLED with smaller "pixels" to reduce problems with burn in because this technology is more mature than MicroLED that is still not economically feasible in scale production. 

 

Don't know if this info is true or not, but that is how I understood it. 

[SavageNeo]

1 hour ago, Spindel said:

should I put my money in Apple stock or TSMC stock or both?

bad idea probably.

[Jet_ski]

1 hour ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

OLEDs? I think this was their typo. Micro LEDs makes a ton of sense, but OLEDs are completely outside their area of expertise.

It’s not a typo. They are planning to make micro OLED panels. Which makes sense if they want their AR to be “Retina”/HiDPI from that short of a distance.
 

Some of the stuff Apple did with the Apple Watch like the always on display tells me they have the engineers for it. And these panels will supposedly be on wafers unlike current displays!

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Jet_ski said:

Summary

Apple has reached a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in order to develop  ultra-advanced display technology, likely for the augmented reality products it has in development. That’s according to a report Wednesdayfrom Nikkei Asia.

The deal will entail the development of micro OLED displays, and represents a partnership between two companies that have long worked together. TSMC is long supplied chips to Apple, including for iPhones. 

The companies are teaming up, per the Nikkei report, because “micro OLED displays are not built on glass substrates like the conventional LCD screens in smartphones and TVs, or OLED displays used in high-end smartphones. Instead, these new displays are built directly onto wafers—the substrates that semiconductors are fabricated on.”

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

I called a while back but I didn’t think Apple would make their own panels; I thought they’d by it from LG or Sony.

 

Whelp. There goes my future income.

 

Sources

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/apple-and-tsmc-team-micro-oled-panel-deal-177977

 

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Apple-partners-with-TSMC-to-develop-ultra-advanced-displays

That means the displays will need to be tiny compared to TVs.  Explains the VR aspect. 

[Jet_ski]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Hmm, so still an OLED tech before microLED then huh.

Apple is launching new iMacs, MacBooks, and iPads with micro LED later this year. At least that’s the rumor.

[JLO64]

7 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

“Panel players are good at making screens bigger and bigger, but when it comes to thin and light devices like AR glasses, you need a very small screen,” a source with “direct information on the micro OLED R&D project” told Nikkei.

Honestly I’m just surprised at the speed with which Apple is preping for its “Apple Glasses”.  Half a year ago I would have guessed they would be something like 5 years out but this combined with their recent usage of LIDAR sensors (a way for these glasses to interact with the world without having a camera strapped on that would piss people off) I wouldn’t be surprised to see them being on sale three years from now.

[RejZoR]

8 hours ago, Spindel said:

Confused, should I put my money in Apple stock or TSMC stock or both?

GameStop, obviously

[Doobeedoo]

11 hours ago, Spindel said:

I read somewhere that it in fact is MicroOLED and not MicroLED that is the deal here. Basically just a different way of making OLED with smaller "pixels" to reduce problems with burn in because this technology is more mature than MicroLED that is still not economically feasible in scale production. 

 

Don't know if this info is true or not, but that is how I understood it. 

Yeah makes sense I guess.

10 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

Apple is launching new iMacs, MacBooks, and iPads with micro LED later this year. At least that’s the rumor.

Those would be MiniLED based though.

[hishnash]

5 hours ago, JLO64 said:

Honestly I’m just surprised at the speed with which Apple is preping for its “Apple Glasses”.  Half a year ago I would have guessed they would be something like 5 years out but this combined with their recent usage of LIDAR sensors (a way for these glasses to interact with the world without having a camera strapped on that would piss people off) I wouldn’t be surprised to see them being on sale three years from now.

Normally we would not see many signs of an product in development at apple until its ready for reales however apple have seen how when they do this in the past `Apple Watch` the software story for developers takes at least 2 to 3 years to take shape. A lot of this is them working out what sort of APIs they need to provide to enable developer to make use of the hardware.  Clearly apple want the glasses to be a hit from day one, they do not want to risk waiting 3 years for the platform to be mature enough to be compelling so they are using the iPhone platform to try out SDK ideas and adapt and learn what works when providing tools to developer for AR. That is also what the VR headset that is coming will be for, its a platform that will have a load of interesting things like eye tracking and likely variable fill rate shading based on this that needs to run at high refresh rates so a perfect place to adapt and learn what they need for that side fo the API, developer tools, profiling etc so that when the real device ships they can expect developers to be able to make use of it very quickly. 

[lostcattears]

Hmmm.... I wish Apple would just jump on MicroLed come on Micro oled...

[Bombastinator]

9 hours ago, lostcattears said:

Hmmm.... I wish Apple would just jump on MicroLed come on Micro oled...

Oled is micro oled.  Oled are easier to make than leds that don’t wear out.