According to Business Korea, Samsung Display will ship 50 million flexible AMOLED displays to Apple in 2017. Next year that amount is set to quadruple to 180-200 million panels, as Apple aims to adopt OLED displays in more iPhone models.
Samsung will produce all of these OLEDs bound for Apple at its A3 fab. Initially SDC aimed to construct a new fab for Apple (the A5 fab) but earlier reports suggested that these plans have been delayed. Samsung managed to increase the yields at its A3 line from 60% in early 2017 to around 90% today.
It is estimated that the iPhone X AMOLED displays cost around $110-120 each. If Samsung will indeed supply almost 200 million OLEDs to Apple in 2018, this means around $20 billion in revenues from Apple alone for SDC.
Apple is obviously not happy to rely on a single supplier for such a critical component as the display, but it has no choice as no other display maker will be able to supply quality OLEDs at such quantities. Apple is reportedly in talks with other companies (most notable LG Display and BOE) but such supply deals will not be possible in 2018.
