Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that after losing millions of orders for the iPhone 14 screen, the company is now on track to produce 70% of the displays for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.
BOE has “secured the majority of 2H23 new iPhone 15 and 15 Plus display orders,” as per Ming-Chi Kuo’s tweets and Medium report (linked in the Twitter thread).
“If development and production proceed smoothly over the next few months,” Kuo writes in his fuller report, “BOE will become the largest display supplier for the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, with a market share of approximately 70 percent (compared to Samsung’s 30 percent).”
Kuo anticipates that BOE’s shipments will increase significantly year-over-year, despite the company’s low base.
BOE only received orders for the 6.1-inch iPhone 14 display for the 2H22 iPhone 14 series and had the smallest market share, he writes. In 2022, BOE’s market share of iPhone display shipments was between 12 and 15%.
“Consequently, even if iPhone shipments are negatively impacted by the economic recession in 2023, BOE could easily achieve a high YoY growth of 70-100% due to the low base of iPhone display shipments in 2022, outperforming the majority of Apple suppliers,” says Kuo.
BOE, a Chinese display manufacturer, has a troubled history with Apple and production difficulties. BOE is believed to have encountered manufacturing issues with iPhone OLED panels at the beginning of 2022, as the global chip shortage reduced its production capacity.
The company was then allegedly caught in May 2022 making an authorized modification to the design of the iPhone 13 displays it was manufacturing. The company allegedly altered the circuit width of the thin film transistors (TFT) without consulting Apple.
According to sources, BOE was required to send senior staff to Apple’s headquarters to make a case for the redesign. At the time, it was reported that BOE requested approval from Apple to produce iPhone 14 OLED panels but received no response.
Despite this, it was reported in July 2022 that BOE had received an order for five million iPhone 14 displays. It was estimated at the time that Apple purchased 25 million display panels from LG and 60 million from Samsung.
