I told you this week that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), invests almost 600 million dollars in a specialized factory on the manufacture of sapphire panels for mobile terminals, and this has generated a wide range of speculations about the intentions of those in Cupertino. The latest of them comes from the Asian publication Digitimes, their analysts indicating that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), could order 5 inch sapphire panels for iPhone 6, a terminal whose launch is rumored to take place next year.
US-based crystal growth solution and equipment provider GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) has announced that Apple will pre-pay US$578 million to secure sapphire supply. GTAT will be able to use the funds to set up additional sapphire production capacity which will produce enough sapphire to make 5-inch screen covers for 33.79-50.56 million iPhones a year, Digitimes Research estimated. US$578 million can be used to procure 1,930-2,890 sapphire growing furnaces for a monthly production of 5.28-7.90 million mm of 2-inch-equivalent sapphire ingots. Such a volume of sapphire ingots could be used to make screen covers for 33.79-50.56 million 5-inch iPhones a year, accounting for 17.8-26.6% of the estimated 190 million iPhones to be shipped in 2014.
According to the information obtained by the Asians, GT Advanced Technologies, the partner company of Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), in this venture, it could annually produce up to 50.5 million 5-inch sapphire panels for iPhones. This figure would represent up to 25% of the total iPhones sold annually by Apple and would not be enough to cover the demand on the market, but Apple obtains its components from several sources, precisely to have enough available.
It is rumored that the investment made by Apple is to give it the opportunity to give up the use of Gorilla Glass to protect the touch screens of its iDevices, but Apple uses sapphire to protect the main camera and the Home button of iPhone 5S. For now, we don't know for sure what Apple intends to do with its new partner company, but we will probably see iDevices with sapphire-protected screens in the future.
