OLED display supplier BOE may produce a 6.06" iPhone Display this year as well as supply Qualcomm with Fingerprint ID Displays
In late February Patently Apple posted a report titled "BOE has Invested in OLED module lines exclusively for Apple." Gaining Apple as a partner will push BOE's explosive growth in OLED production to new heights. A new report out of South Korea today discussed BOE's OLED shipment jumped 700% in 2019. Beyond OLED displays, BOE has been working with Huawei, Royole, Lenovo and other for folding displays.
The report lastly noted that "For BOE, one of its main barometers of success this year will depend on whether it can supply the 6.06-inch iPhone scheduled to be launched in the latter half of this year. BOE will be battling it out with both Samsung and LG."
This is inline with rumors like the one posted by pocket-lint earlier this month: "Apparently we might get a 5.42-inch model, a 6.06-inch model and a 6.67-inch in place of the 5.8-inch, 6.1-inch and 6.5-inch models we have at the moment. Some speculation also suggests in-display fingerprint sensors," which is a nice segue to our next part of our report.
A report from China's Caixin Global late last week stated that "Chinese panel-maker BOE Technology and U.S. semiconductor giant Qualcomm have announced a partnership to develop new display products powered by the latter company’s fingerprint recognition technology.
As part of the partnership, BOE will integrate Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic ultrasonic fingerprint sensors into its flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels to provide a solution that can help enhance the accuracy and security of fingerprint recognition. BOE confirmed this in a statement published last Wednesday on its public WeChat account.
BOE will start shipping the Qualcomm technology-powered flexible OLED panels in the second half of 2020, according to the statement, adding that the two companies’ partnership will also extend to 5G, AR and the internet of things.
BOE has expertise and patents for displays with integrated fingerprint readers. Whether Apple will work with BOE on such technology for future iPhones is unknown at this time but we know that Apple has been working on Touch ID for under the display for some time.
Earlier today Patently Apple posted a patent application report that was discovered in Europe last month. You could review our report tiled "Apple Invents Under-Display Optical Fingerprint Sensor with Narrow Field-of-View Collimator and TFT/Organic Imager" here.
With most top Android phones likely to offer under display fingerprint ID for Q4 2020, the pressure will be on Apple to not allow this feature to be an Android-only feature.
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