Informed sources said that the Sharp Co is expected to expand the scale of investment, spend about 100 billion yen ($880 million) for fabricating organic light emitting diodes (organic light emitting diode, referred to as: OLED) display, the technology will be applied to Apple Corp (Apple Inc., AAPL) under a series of iPhone mobile phone.
SHARP and other OLED display manufacturers are trying to catch up with Samsung Electronics (Samsung Electronics Co); Samsung Electronics not only make this kind of display, but also its application in the world of music (Galaxy) smartphone. Informed sources said earlier that Apple Corp has decided to use a OLED display on a iPhone later this year.
SHARP plans to produce at least 30 thousand display panels per month in Japan next year, according to people familiar with SHARP's investment plans. These people said that it would require an investment of about 100 billion yen, higher than last year's September disclosure of 57 billion 400 million yen, SHARP plans to invest in the establishment of small-scale OLED production line by the year of 2018 before the investment. SHARP is headquartered in Osaka, Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn Technology Group) holds the majority stake in the company.
SHARP spokesman declined to comment.
Market Research and consulting firm Display Supply Chain Consultants co-founder Yoshio Tamura said, SHARP intends to the annual production of the panel can be made into 15 million pieces of intelligent mobile phone screen.
Tamura said, taking into account the annual production scale of hundreds of millions of smart phones, if SHARP wants to become a strong player in the OLED display market, the company needs to further enhance production capacity.
Tamura said that the monthly production of 30 thousand panels is tantamount to an utterly inadequate measure.
Analysts said that more than 95% of the smart phone OLED display made by Samsung Electronics, which is partly due to the difficulties faced by competitors in the production of these screens required mechanical equipment. South Korea's LG Display Co. and Japan Display Inc, and the BOE Technology Group Limited (BOE Technology Group), headquartered in Chinese manufacturers, are speeding up OLED plant construction plans.
Tamura said that in 2020 the smart phone manufacturers may consume 1 billion OLED displays a year, up from this year's 500 million.
