Faced with the industry’s infamous shortage of components due to a perfect storm of supply chain factors, one of Apple’s OLED display suppliers – BOE – decided to wing it and change the panel design on its own volition in order to remain in the game, reports The Elec.
It will now provide a fraction of that amount as Apple is said to have halted orders from BOE since at least February. One of the reasons is reportedly the changing of the iPhone’s OLED display design that BOE decided to undertake when it was faced with a dearth of display driver IC (DDI) components.
Apparently, the screen maker slightly altered the display driver’s design “to make the panel thin film transistor (TFT) circuit width slightly wider” and catch up with its iPhone 13 panel production orders.
It’s precisely Samsung Display’s patents that could have been the other reason for BOE’s search of a workaround, as it recently became clear that Samsung may have notified Apple that BOE is infringing on its pixel structure and touch electrode OLED patents.
