Samsung Could Make $22 Billion Off Next Year's iPhones (cnet.com) 43
According to a report by Korean outlet ETnews (via The Investor), Apple placed an order for 180 million to 200 million OLED displays from Samsung's manufacturing branch, Samsung Display, for the next round of iPhones. Each display is estimated to cost $110, which could mean the deal is worth up to $22 billion. CNET reports: The recently released iPhone X was Apple's first phone to feature an OLED display, rather than an LCD panel. Samsung, on the other hand, has been using OLED displays in its phones for quite some time. Currently Samsung holds a near monopoly on the world's manufacturing of OLED screens. As a result, Apple had little choice but to turn to its rival for this type of screen. This isn't the first deal of its kind. Earlier this year it was reported that Apple bought 60 million OLED displays from Samsung, apparently for what would later become the iPhone X. According to the report, Apple's next order is up to four times larger than this previous order. Demand is so high that Samsung considered opening a new manufacturing plant to process Apple's order, the report said, but has been able to manufacture enough of the panels to fill Apple's order.
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You live in a moron area I guess.
Re: But, the environment!! (Score:2)
Call the area I live in a moron area if you want, but it doesn't provide me with anything to take back to them to change their minds.
Not sure what, if anything, would convince them. Their focus is a bit more near term. Profits, the economy, etc. Dog eat dog world. Worrying about the environment is a luxury we apparently cannot afford.
Samsung could gross $22 billion (Score:3, Informative)
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If they we're contemplating a second factory, but made due without, it's safe to assume they're doing alright on the deal (but probably not even close to half of the 22 billion).
Re:Samsung could gross $22 billion (Score:4, Informative)
The easiest way to tell if a journalist is economically illiterate is when they don't understand the difference between revenue and profit.
TFA was written by someone who is not qualified to be writing about business.
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Making OLED displays is going to be hard for Apple. Firstly there are still a ton of valid patents in the field that would more or less exclude Apple, and given Samsung have invested large sums of money developing OLED displays that's exactly what patents are for, unlike Apples software bull shit patents.
Secondly even in the absence of patents there is a huge amount of just "know how" in actually running a plant that actually produces OLED displays at volume. Again this is something that Samsung have spent
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In general when a company sells a lot of products it can compete hard with and be the best parter with the same company. It isn’t hard to do if the people in charge are willing to be adults.
We have Google and Amazon who doesn’t realize this yet.
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OLEDs are already coming off the line, so no new tech. And $110 was the estimated profit per unit, not the total cost to Apple. I imagine Apple is starting up it's own OLED factory for that much cash.
Or, in other words, Samsung is making about what Apple's Irish fine is, and Apple still has more money than anyone.
Last year's tech still has to be paid for (Score:2)
> OLEDs are already coming off the line, so no new tech.
It's still a cost, whether they do the R&D this year, or they borrowed money for it last year and pay that back this year, or they "borrowed" from themselves and need to replenish their funds. The cost is spread over all the displays that use the exact same tech, though, so their R&D cost for this year's displays is less if by sharing the cost with last year's production.
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Nope, that's not how things work. Samsung paid for the line and R&D for other uses. That they can run a third shift and sell the screens to Apple didn't involve any capital expenditures.
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Apple is paying somewhere between $65 and $71 per display [theinvestor.co.kr] depending on where you get your numbers. The variance in the cost per display in different reports is likely due to market variance caused by the supply pinch.
The $110 number comes from an analysis of the total that Apple is paying for all Samsung components that they use in the phone and is still the gross amount, not the profit.
The full production cost of the iPhone X is said to be around $357 [9to5mac.com]. There isn't exactly room in that for Samsung to make $
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Or, in other words, Samsung is making about what Apple's Irish fine is, and Apple still has more money than anyone.
Just saying: There will be no "Irish fine". There _may_ be a correction of Apple's Irish tax bill.
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We have no idea how much they will make (a word usually synonymous with "profit") or even whether they will make anything at all on the deal given how expensive, and even risky, the tech is to develop and produce. Only time will tell.
Why wouldn't Samsung not make a huge profit? The technology and manufacturing process are not risky, since they've been doing this for many years at high volume. They are also the dominant supplier, so they would be hugely inept to not negotiate a deal that guarantees huge profits. At worst, they could walk away from any deal and actually better compete with Apple in the high-end smartphone market.
Based on the supposedly reliable Ming-Chi Kuo [theverge.com], Apple is paying Samsung $120-$130 per OLED screen and is urge
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Samsung OLED operating margins are 12% to 22%, which would put the profit on $22 billion at around 2.5 to 5 billion dollars.
Exactly. They will "make" something less than $5 billion assuming there aren't further issues waiting in the wings as these screens age. They will not make $22 billion. But that is the way most are reading these headlines and articles. The comments and follow-on analyses present on virtually every article that has reported this show that the readers are being successfully misled into believing that Samsung is pocketing $22 billion profit.
There also seems to be a lot of confusion on the actual gross amount S
When there is money... (Score:2)
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Cock off Chris. No-one loves you or wants you.
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Micro LED (Score:2)
Nobody at Samsung even knows what tf a microLED is. It is the next big thing, and other companies are way ahead of the game. Samsung executives better make sure they pay off all their mortgages by 2019.
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Near-Monopoly (Score:2)
LG, Sharp, Kopin, and Japan Display also make OLED displays, off the top of my head. No idea if any make displays suitable for a smartphone, though if $22 billion was on the line I imagine they could make it happen.
If the order amount is tripled, then either demand for a $1,000 iPhone is far higher than anticipated, or they're planning on rolling out OLED displays to other models e.g. the iPhone 9 Plus. I imagine once consumers realize how much better HDR screens are, they'll start thinking "normal iPhone s
market for $200 phones (Score:1)
I'm typing this on a $200 Moto something-gen. Works great. Then I see ads for $300 off and this for the screen which costs (at massive volume) $100 ...
And I'm left wondering, what am I missing? Is there a funding model for $1000 phones I'm missing, or are folks that flush that they can fork over the $1000, and not blink?