It’s not specifically a secret that the iPhone 6’s show goes to be created out of sapphire for further scratch resistance. currently UBS Research’s half-moon preview on GT Advanced Technologies, that is that the company that is been shrunk by Apple to form all of the sapphire for the iPhone 6 show, shows that they’ve begun shipping sapphire screens to China.
Here’s what their research had to show:
“Checks find GT’s Arizona factory likely started producing sapphire last month. Our own checks found that for the first time GT shipped some small quantities of sapphire made in its Arizona fab to one of Apple’s partners in China who is in charge of making sapphire covers. Our checks find the amount of ingots it sold into China last month was only about 2,200kg which would be in line with our estimate of about 100 sapphire furnaces turned on and running (our checks find 100 furnaces were targeted for installation in 4Q13). We believe GT is still on schedule in Arizona, where we estimate GT was to install another 400-500 sapphire furnaces in 1Q14 and 900-1,000 in 2Q14. GT confirmed last week that it received a 3rd prepayment from Apple recently (we estimate the 4th and last prepayment will be made in May) which also gives us confidence that its Arizona sapphire factory for Apple is tracking on schedule.”
Analyst Matt Margolis believes that “approximately 100,000 to 115,000 sapphire screens might be created from a pair of,200 weight unit of sapphire ingots”. GT are marketing every sapphire screen for $8.50-$10 a unit. This makes GT’s costs considerably cheaper 25th to be exact) than Apple’s previous sapphire provider.
Overall, GT is calculable to attain anyplace from $600m-$800m, with regarding 80th of their sales returning from Apple alone.
GT Advanced has enough equipment to supply 100 million iPhone displays a year, if they must want to create that several. Seeing because the next generation iPhone goes to own a supposedly 5” screen, it would be an enormous enough amendment that’ll create the iPhone fly off the shelves in an exceedingly manic disorder like ne’er before.
