Sharp To Mass Produce iPhone 5S LCDs In June
A recent report suggests that the Japanese corporation Sharp (that manufactures LCDs and is also a supplier for Apple) will begin to manufacture LCDs for Apple’s iPhone 5S. According to the same report, mass production of the LCDs is said to start in June. It seems that Sharp will be using the Kameyama Plant No. 1 to make displays for the next generation iPhone, the iPhone 5S which is rumoured to be released during this year’s third quarter.
The Kameyama Plant No. 1 (an LCD plant situated in Japan’s Mie Prefecture) was not used a lot and that’s because Sharp’s LCD manufacturing decreased last year. The problems were so big regarding LCD manufacturing that Sharp only used the Kameyama Plant No. 1 at 40% from its max capacity of 600 million LCDs manufactured per month. Sharp was one of the most powerful manufacturers of electronic products from Japan, however since its revenue started to wane, Sharp was compelled to take investments from corporations like Foxconn and Samsung, both of which are also Apple suppliers. Samsung also became recently, thanks to its investment, the largest foreign stakeholder at Sharp.
According to the same report, it would seem that Sharp is not the only iPhone 5S LCD supplier as Japan Display (a small – medium display maker, that was established by the merger of
Sony’s, Hitachi’s and Toshiba’s display businesses) will also produce displays for the next gen iPhone and it seems that they already started mass production.
The iPhone 5S will probably keep the current iPhone’s display. There are also (rumored) new features and improvements, among them being a faster A7 SoC, a fingerprint sensor (that might have cause a delay of Apple’s smartphone, because Foxconn had some problems manufacturing it) and the seventh version of iOS being released with the smartphone. Last month, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo noted that the problems with the fingerprint sensor correlated with the rumoured iOS 7 development delays, might cause an unusual release period for Apple’s iPhone 5S. There are also rumours of a low cost iPhone model that might be released around the same period as the iPhone 5S, but aimed at a different market segment.
