Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), has a very big secret revealed today, the American company having a special laboratory in which it develops new types of microLED screens that it hopes to use in iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc., in the future. Apple has made a substantial investment in setting up a laboratory in Santa Clara, California, where it wants to make microLED screens, which are thinner, have higher brightness and consume less energy than OLED screens.
Apple hopes that in the next 2-3 years it will be able to implement the first microLED screens in the Apple Watch, while in the case of the iPhone it could take 5 years until such screens could be used for production. Apple has made remarkable progress with this technology, in the last 3 years it managed to bring it to the stage where it produces its own prototypes for testing with microLED screens in Santa Clara, something that did not seem possible 1 year ago.
Apple the secret laboratory where it makes screens to get rid of Samsung
In 2014, Apple bought a company specialized in the development of microLED screens, it had laboratories in Taiwan for its development, but gave them up because it could not improve the technology. Apple came close to stopping the project 1 year ago, but it seems to have made remarkable progress since then, and is now in an advanced stage of the testing process, with engineers who worked on the screen of the first iPhone leading the project.
"The technology giant is making a significant investment in the development of next-generation MicroLED screens. The California facility is too small for mass-production, but the company wants to keep the proprietary technology away from its partners as long as possible. "We put a lot of money into the facility," this person says. "It's big enough to get through the engineering builds [and] lets us keep everything in-house during the development stages."
Apple has about 300 engineers developing microLED screens at the moment, and of course it will not produce its own screens if the technology is good enough to be implemented in finished products. If the microLED technology will be ready for commercial products, then Apple will have to use other companies to be able to manufacture these components, the intention of the Americans being to give up Samsung after years and years of legal disputes.
