Samsung Display’s CEO allegedly met with Apple’s CEO to discuss OLED display orders, according to Patently Apple. According to this source, Samsung will sue Apple if the corporation does not fulfill the orders as promised.
“We believe the company’s year-to-date revenue performance for the June quarter will be influenced by a number of limiting factors in terms of revenue and financial performance,” Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said yesterday at Apple’s Financials Conference. due to the global Covid epidemic’s impact on supply These restrictions are expected to be in the range of $4 billion to $8 billion, which is much higher than what we saw in Q3.”
In the smartphone business, supply restrictions affect every provider. In the first quarter of 2022, China’s Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo all suffered a significant drop in sales (as reported by IDC). Thanks to the popular iPhone 13 and Apple’s superb supply chain management staff, Apple was the only supplier to see a modest gain in the quarter.
Samsung will sue Apple if the business fails to fulfill its OLED screen orders as promised
A supply chain insider said a meeting between Samsung Display CEO Joo-Sun Choi and Apple CEO Tim Cook took place around the same time.
Choi “was on a business trip when he learned of Apple’s decision to lower yearly iPhone manufacturing by 15% this year,” according to Korea’s IT Home site. According to the source, Apple CEO Tim Cook requested not to cut the amount of OLEDs bought in accordance with the initial pledge at a meeting.
“It is reported that at the end of last year, Apple set a strategy to create 220 million iPhone units by 2022 and alerted component suppliers based on this,” the source continued. Samsung Display is one among them, with an expected order of 160 million OLED panels for Apple’s iPhone.
However, due to semiconductor supply limitations and the disease’s continuous spread, Apple recently decreased its yearly iPhone manufacturing target to 185 million units, down 15.9% from the previous estimate.
Samsung Display’s CEO hopes that Apple will not cut down on pledged purchases, and even if the business does, he hopes that the cuts will not be made immediately. Samsung Display openly stated earlier this year that it will “use patents as a strategy to deal with increasingly severe competition in the OLED market”: “Apple and Samsung are discussing a legal strategy against OLED display competitors.”
“I am aware that Samsung Display has warned through multiple channels that it may sue Apple for patents against devices featuring competing OLED screens,” an industry source told IT Home. Samsung’s aims, he believes, appear to have BOE.
With supply chains already under strain during the impending challenging economic period, Samsung may be able to exert pressure on competitors by leveraging its patent advantage.
