Expensive iPads aren't selling so LG is moving on to iPhone displays
LG will be retooling its iPad display production lines in order to make iPhones. A significant part in that decision played the fact that Apple's expensive iPad Pro models, for which LG makes the ingenuous dual-stack OLED display, just aren't selling very well.
The 13-inch iPad Pro (2024) model, for instance, starts from the whopping $1,299, or more than Apple's Mac computers even, and no amount of long-lasting, bright tandem OLED display specs can alter that fact.
According to The Elec, this is why LG has decided to recoup some of the $2.3 billion investment it made in a larger panel IT display production line that was built to supply Apple's iPads and other tablet or laptop models with OLED screens.
To make a new iPhone display production line similar to its current E6-1, E6-2, and E6-3 lines, LG would have to spend nearly as much as it did for the IT OLED line that can will now work below capacity as Apple's iPad sales are expected to remain flat in 2025, after a disappointing 2024.
To add some capacity utilization and raise the share of iPhone screens it provides to Apple, however, LG only has to add some extra touch layer deposition equipment, and it will be good to go. Reportedly, that is exactly what it is planning to do, raising its iPhone display supply share from 52 million in 2023 and 64 million last year, to more than 70 million panels in 2025.
Apple will still have to approve the dual use of the iPad OLED display line for iPhone screen production, and LG has until February to convince it that it can pull that off and take more business. Apple is expected to launch five new iPhone models in 2025, including an iPhone 17 Slim and iPhone SE 3, so any excess capacity that diversifies its supply chain away from Samsung should be more than welcome.
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