From the beginning of this year, the industry revealed that Apple designed a new device with 20.25-inch AMOLED display in the unfolded state and 15.3-inch AMOLED display in the folded state, the outside world has been very concerned about the progress of Apple's foldable products, because for the display industry, foldable products are basically considered to be products that can double the shipping area in the existing category.

 

 

Recently, news from the South Korean supply chain said that Apple's display R&D team in South Korea has begun discussions with Samsung Display and LGD on the mass production details of this foldable AMOLED, including adjustments to the production line equipment, the development of tooling, and the design of process control.

 

 

 

Related equipment suppliers believe that Apple's move is still based on the promotion of two panel factories to build 8.7 generation AMOLED production lines, and no changes or new requirements for core equipment for this product, so the outside world does not need to have greater expectations for Apple's move.

 

 

In fact, since the launch of Samsung's foldable phone, Samsung Display and LGD has been providing flexible AMOLED displays for Apple's various prototypes to test and verify the use of the two panel companies, different sizes of flexible AMOLED displays, just the number of splicing FMM mask template, and does not require special changes to the production line.

 

 

However, Apple's display team in South Korea launched a new medium and large size AMOLED display, taken directly with ultra-thin flexible glass as the display substrate, and then produce a stack of light-emitting layers on top of the AMOLED light-emitting structure, and finally to print packaging mode to complete the production of the display.

 

 

Compared with the existing flexible AMOLED display, in fact, only the elimination of a layer of transparent PI substrate production and peeling process, increasing the wavelength selective coating process of flexible glass substrates and electrical performance isolation process, but to reduce the AMOLED display non-luminous layer production process of mass production difficulties.

 

 

Apple has a very obvious rule when designing the display, that is, for products within a certain size range, the line width of the driver circuit and the size of the display pixels are fixed, so Apple's production line engineers can easily find the quality abnormalities caused by the variables in the mass production process, and Apple's UI engineers basically do not have to repeat the hardware adaptation for the same size range when iterating the product. At the same time, Apple's UI engineers basically do not have to repeat the optimization and adjustment of display resolution and color gamut in hardware adaptation for the iteration of products in the same size range, but only need to handle the optimization of the image algorithm of the system platform software, so that the display effect of products in the same size range can be unified.

 

 

So Apple and Samsung display and LGD together with the planning of the 8.7 generation AMOLED production line, certainly contains a large size iPad display, Mac notebook display, as well as a larger size portable display, can also be considered almost Apple's portable "productivity tools display" category. Apple's current development of 20.25-inch foldable flexible AMOLED device prototype, can also be understood as four iPad display area, or this 20.25-inch display, an open four after the iPad display.

 

 

In fact, Apple developed a variety of so-called flexible AMOLED display product prototypes, including wrap-around, foldable, curl retractable, stitchable iPhone, iPad, Mac product prototypes, but in the end these devices are in the eyes of the OS system UI engineers turned into "garbage", because Any curved display can not present a "real image", and if the surface is flattened out to experience a better display, the so-called flexible and foldable are superfluous.

 

 

But for Apple's structural engineers, if not in the product's portable aspects of "something," then always show themselves not so important, so the market has a product form, or the envisaged product form, first get a prototype, so that everyone for the "optimization "Of course, they are still happy to do so.

 

 

In fact, the key problem that prevents Apple from launching foldable products is still in the user input interaction interface, whether it is a foldable phone or foldable tablet or foldable Mac computer, Apple is not willing to lose the user input interaction interface experience. Because for the interactive smart hardware device design industry, if the user input interface experience is very bad, it can basically be considered a failed product, the future frequency of use will be very low, and eventually reduced to a very mediocre portable display, and the product can have better productivity of the initial design concept runs counter to.

 

Apple's earliest motivation for developing foldable products did not come from its fascination with this product form, but from its confidence in its AI voice interaction technology. However, it has been proven that the powerful AI technology is still unable to do a good job of voice interaction, which is why Apple has been slow to get started on foldable devices.

 

 

To know an iPad product, Apple had to match a keyboard and a pen in order to do it well, and then the real use scenario in the market, or reduced to a portable network player and games, professionals prefer to use the Mac computer directly, ordinary users may as well take the iPhone directly to brush the screen, Apple got a bunch of things to put together the iPad, and ultimately did not get A clear market positioning.

 

 

And the industry also believes that even if Apple launches a large foldable iPad product, it still has to be equipped with an external keyboard and stylus and other accessories, after all, the high-frequency text input precision blind typing, relying on a pure flat glass plus a few pressure sensor tips, or can not be achieved. Its current product positioning may be in that it can meet the needs of portable desktop display scenarios, but also to meet the needs of some large size iPad enthusiasts "test products", Apple's core business, is still the existing form of iPhone and Mac computer.