Samsung Begins Running OLED Production Lines for iPhone 8 at Full Capacity
As we enter the season of iPhone production ramp-up stories, news out of Apple's supply chain today reports that Samsung Display is gearing up to operate seven of its next-generation OLED lines at full capacity in August, all of which are dedicated to Apple and the iPhone 8.
According to ETNews, the OLED ramp-up follows a series of inspections that Samsung made on each of the seven lines over the past few weeks in preparation for Apple's much-anticipated OLED-only iPhone 8. Samsung Display is the only supplier of OLED screens for the 2017 iPhone, and the manufacturer is said to see an increase from 15,000 panels per month to 105,000 panels per month following the full scale production increase.
Samsung Display crafts multiple iPhone screens out of a single of its OLED panels, so if it keeps its production lines at maximum capacity with 100 percent yield, the supplier can produce 130 million 5.8-inch OLED iPhone screens in one year. Of course, the reality is that OLED is difficult to manufacture, and industry watchers believe that the yield rate for the Samsung Display OLED iPhone 8 line will be "at least" 60 percent. Multiple reports this year have pointed towards
production delays in the supply chain, potentially leading to a
limited capacity iPhone 8 launch.
While Samsung Display will be the sole OLED supplier for the 2017 iPhone, numerous sources have said that a new supplier -- LG Display -- will enter Apple's OLED supply chain in 2018. Apple is said to have invested $2.6 billion into LG Display to help the supplier get set up as a major OLED manufacturer for future iPhones, with Apple pressing LG to be ready as soon as next year. LG Display is also planning to invest $13 billion in OLED production over the next three years, continuing its dominance in the OLED TV screen market and specifically hoping to "make inroads against rival Samsung in smartphone displays."
Popular Stories
Apple plans to cut production of the iPhone Air amid underwhelming sales performance, Japan's Mizuho Securities believes (via The Elec).
The Japanese investment banking and securities firm claims that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are seeing higher sales than their predecessors during the same period last year, while the standard iPhone 17 is a major success, performing...
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year.
The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
We didn't get a second fall event this year, but Apple did unveil updated products with a series of press releases that went out today. The M5 chip made an appearance in new MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro models.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up our coverage and highlighted the main feature changes for each device below.
MacBook Pro
M5...
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with an M5 chip, and there are two key storage-related upgrades beyond that chip bump.
First, Apple says the new 14-inch MacBook Pro offers up to 2× faster SSD performance than the equivalent previous-generation model, so read and write speeds should get a significant boost. Apple says it is using "the latest storage technology," ...
Apple today announced the next-generation iPad Pro, featuring the custom-designed M5, C1X, and N1 chips.
The M5 chip has up to a 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It features a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core, allowing the new iPad Pro to deliver up to 3.5x the AI performance than the previous model, and a third-generation ray-tracing ...
Apple today updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, which is also available in updated iPad Pro and Vision Pro models.
In addition, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro can now be configured with up to 4TB of storage on Apple's online store, whereas the previous model maxed out at 2TB. However, the maximum amount of unified RAM available for this model remains 32GB.
Like...
Apple's software engineers continue to internally test iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions.
iOS 26.0.2 will be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet.
The update will likely be released by the end of next week.
Last month, Apple released iOS 26.0.1,...
Apple plans to launch MacBook Air models equipped with the new M5 chip in spring 2026, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple is also working on M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models that will come early in the year.
Neither the MacBook Pro models nor the MacBook Air models are expected to get design changes, with Apple focusing on simple chip upgrades. In the case of the MacBook Pro, a m...
The first alleged benchmark result for the M5 chip in the new 14-inch MacBook Pro has surfaced, allowing for some performance comparisons.
Based on a single unconfirmed result uploaded to the Geekbench 6 database today, the M5 chip has pulled off an impressive feat. Specifically, the chip achieved a score of 4,263 for single-core CPU performance, which is the highest single-core score that...
