We are always hearing how Samsung is going to pay Apple some form of royalty or another, often running up into billions of dollars. Well, seems like we are going to see a reversal in roles here!
Apparently, Samsung has much to gain from the soon to be launched iPhone X. Thanks to Samsung’s rising popularity as a component supplier, Apple, despite an impending court case with the former, has picked the South-Korean manufacturer to be the major component supplier for the new iPhone X.
Samsung, being the world leader in OLED Displays has supplied the bezel-less 5.8 OLED Display, NAND flash memory chip and DRAM chip for the new iPhone X. Going by the analysis report by CounterPoint Market research, Samsung stands to earn more from the iPhone X’s parts than its own Galaxy S8 phones!
The Wall Street Journal stated —
“Counterpoint expects Apple will sell 130 million iPhone X units, earning Samsung $110 on each through the summer of 2019, while Galaxy S8’s global sales are expected to be 50 million, earning Samsung $202 each from components such as displays and chips in its first 20 months of sales.”
For those of you wondering why Apple chose Samsung as the OLED display supplier for their flagship, here’s a guess.
Apple’s previous models and this year’s iPhone 8 series sported the IPS LCD display. But the company’s slow transition from retina to curved display (Better late than never!) paved the way for Samsung to be the sole OLED display supplier for the iPhone X. Frankly, Apple had no choice as Samsung might just be the only supplier who could meet the expectation of high-quality OLED displays and the huge demand. Samsung is also reported to be building world’s largest OLED Factory (what’s next? World dominance?)
Whatever the case may be, we are sure that Samsung is going to make a fortune off of iPhone X sales! (Yes I felt just as weird writing that sentence as you are feeling reading it!)
This partnership, however, doesn’t ease the relations between the two tech giants.
Despite Apple’s feeble attempts to break away from this arrangement of court cases and partnerships, it is believed that the iPhone maker might be looking for another manufacturer to replace Samsung. There also have been rumours of Apple being in talks with LG for OLED displays and few Chinese manufacturers approaching the American conglomerate in the same regard. For now, Samsung remains the OLED supplier for Apple but the company might have to work hard maintain Apple’s continued reliance on it.
While we struggle to understand the weirdly complex relationship between the two renowned Smartphone makers, both the firms have decided to make peace for the launch of the much awaited iPhone X. The anniversary edition flagship will be up for grabs on 3 November in the international markets.