According to industry reports, Apple recently established four display research labs in China, in Beijing, Shenzhen, Suzhou, and Shanghai.
Apple has reportedly formed an alliance with China's leading OLED makers, as the company gets ready to deploy OLED panels in its laptops and tablets. Apple is interested in diversifying its supply chain and not rely exclusively on Samsung Display and LG Display for its smartphone and IT AMOLED panels. The main goal of the new research labs is to test OLED panels produced by Chinese display makers, and evaluate and compare them to LG's and Samsung's OLEDs.
Apple invested tens of millions of dollars in these new fab,s as the investment in Shenzhen's display lab alone is estimated at around $13 million USD, and Apple plans to increase the number of display engineers in China to around 1,000 in the future.
