There have been several rumors that suggest that Apple will use sapphire glass display instead of Gorilla Glass either in the next generation iPhone or its rumored iWatch that are expected to launched later this year.
Not surprisingly, Corning Glass senior vice president Tony Tripeny was quite critical about gorilla glass when he was asked by Morgan Stanley’s James Fawcett at the recent Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference about rumors that at least one manufacturer was looking to move to Sapphire as an alternative, and his thoughts on gorilla glass versus sapphire. He had this to say:
When we look at it, we see a lot of disadvantages of Sapphire versus Gorilla Glass. It’s about 10 times more expensive. It’s about 1.6 times heavier. It’s environmentally unfriendly. It takes about 100 times more energy to generate a Sapphire crystal than it does glass. It transmits less light which it means either dimmer devices or shorter battery life. It continues to break. I think while it’s scratch resistant product it still breaks and our testing says that Gorilla Glass, about 2.5 times more pressure that it can take than Sapphire on. So when we look at it, we think from an overall industry and trend that is not attractive in consumer electronics.
He also went on to explain why Sapphire was more expensive to make than Gorilla Glass:
The formation takes about 4,000 times longer than Gorilla Glass at a significantly higher melting temperature. Its hardness makes machining more difficult and costly. Then the cost per unit increases exponentially because when you have defects in boundaries in the crystal growth process, you essentially cut them out and so unlike glass where we have developed technologies so that we can have very large pristine pieces of glass, when you have that on crystals, what you end up doing is always having a yield issue. So it is really those items that make things more expensive.
He also revealed that Corning is planning to launch a new version of Gorilla Glass with better drop performance later this year.
In November 2013, Apple hadconfirmed that the company was planning to setup a sapphire glass production facility in Mesa, Arizona with GT Advanced Technologies.
When Tim Cook was asked about Apple’s manufacturing in the U.S. at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting last week, he said that the facility in Arizona was for a “secret project” that he could’t talk about.
According to reports, Apple isaggressively pursuing the launch of its new plant in Mesa, Arizona by February. Reports also indicate that Apple is planning to make a critical sub-component for its products at the sapphire plant. Apple already uses sapphire glass to protect the camera lens on the iPhone and iPad, and also for Touch ID fingerprint sensor.
There have been several rumors and speculations that Apple plans to use the plant to make sapphire glass displays for the next generation iPhone. Job postings have also revealed that Apple may be planning to add a solar-based wireless charging feature to the next generation iPhone by embedding ultra-thin solar cells onto sapphire glass display.
Interestingly though, when Corning executives were asked what they had assumed for that company (Apple in this case) going forward in their financial guidance, they indicated that they didn’t expect to lose significant market share in 2014.
So if I had to read between the lines, it means that Apple may not use sapphire glass for iPhone 6, and use it only for iWatch. If Apple would have decided to use sapphire then it would have had a significant impact on its market share in 2014.
As I’ve mentioned previously, iWatch seems to be the most likely candidate for Sapphire in 2014, as I find it hard to believe that Apple will be able to scale up production of sapphire glass displays so quickly to meet the demand of the new iPhone. In case of the iWatch, it will be able to control the launch of the iWatch by staggering the launch across the world.
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