The other day, on the pages of Bloomberg, the well-known author of publications about Apple products, Mark Gurman (Mark Gurman), announced the company’s decision to abandon another long-term venture. After seven years of development, the company will no longer attempt to create microLED-type displays for use in the Watch smartwatch.
Such brighter displays with improved color rendering were first supposed to appear on the Apple Watch, but the company may implement them in larger devices later. As the source noted, these efforts required a lot of money and ran into technical difficulties, so Apple had to abandon related initiatives. Apple’s team of experts involved in the development of microLED is being reduced and restructured.
Apple has primarily preferred the developments in the field of display creation offered to it by partners such as LG Display or Samsung. Apple expected to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors by developing its own competencies in this field. MicroLED technology seemed promising to him, as it allowed to improve the quality of color transmission, reduce energy consumption and reduce the thickness of the device body. The company expected to replace OLED with microLEDs, starting with the Apple Watch and later in its smartphones, tablets and laptops.
As Bloomberg notes, attempts by Apple to create its own microLED displays were launched about seven years ago. Initially, the microLED type screens created on the Watch were planned to appear at the beginning of 2020, but the dates were constantly changing. The company has even built a small production line in California, where it plans to establish experimental production of such displays, and special research centers have been organized in Asia. Bloomberg representatives managed to make sure last week that the business in California was still operating, that people had exited the building and that their personal cars were in the parking lot.
According to the source, Apple does not give up on the idea of ​​using microLED displays in its devices other than the Watch, and is trying to find new technologies for their production and contractors who can master them. Bloomberg representatives do not undertake to predict when this initiative will bear fruit in its current form.