In the coming weeks, Toshiba will unveil a final decision concerning selling a majority stake in its lucrative memory business. Bloomberg reported this morning that iPhone manufacturer Foxconn's preliminary bid for Toshiba's semiconductor unit is valued at a whopping $26.93 billion. According to Bloomberg's sources, that amount is in part to force negotiations, using a bid that's too high to ignore.
Apple supplier SK Hynix unveiled 72-layer, 256-gigabit (Gb) 3D NAND flash memory chips based on triple-level cell arrays. By stacking 1.5 times more cells than the company's previous 48-layer technology, a single 256Gb NAND flash chip can represent 32 gigabytes of storage with two times faster internal operation speed and twenty percent faster read/write performance than a 48-layer 3D NAND chip.
A report in ETNews, cited by DigiTimes, claims that Apple recently negotiated a major two-year supply deal with Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, regarding curved OLED panels for future iPhones. Samsung's display-making arm produces more than 90 percent of all OLED panels for smartphones and tablets.
A third-generation Apple Watch is expected to be announced in the fall with battery life and performance improvements. Today, DigiTimes said Apple had asked its suppliers to begin shipping parts for the device in the second half of 2017.
The tentatively named Apple Watch Series 3 should be assembled by Compal Electronics, with Quanta Computer taking over production of current models.
In other words, existing Apple Watch Series 2 and 1 models should be kept on sale at reduced prices after Apple Watch Series 3 hits.
Apple has placed a huge order for seventy million bendable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels with Samsung's display-making arm for use in iPhone 8, Nikkei reported Monday. Apple and Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, signed a deal last year to supply 100 million OLEDs for iPhone 8. In February 2017, Apple contracted Samsung to build an additional 60 million OLEDs for a total of 160 million units in 2017.
Although Toshiba saw strong overall results from its HDD/SSD business in 2016, it's spinning off the lucrative NAND flash unit into a separate company. It's a last-ditch effort to plug a gap after the firm reported a heavy one-off $6.3 billion loss in December 2016, prompting its chairman to resign.
Korean Herald cited yesterday's report in Yomiuri Shimbun Daily claiming that Apple, Amazon and Google are engaged in a bidding war to acquire the Japanese giant's NAND flash unit. A very diverse conglomerate, Toshiba is Apple’s top supplier of memory chips for iOS devices and files as the second-largest flash chip maker in the world after Samsung Electronics.
Apple today said its eleventh Supplier Responsibility report is now available, highlighting how its supply chain companies are treating workers and what they're doing to improve working conditions at their facilities. In 2016, Apple trained more than 2.4 million workers on their rights. Since 2008, over two million people have participated in its Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program.
The company audited 705 suppliers last year, saying that compliance with 60-hour maximum work week for employees has reached 98 percent, the highest ever.
Evidence continues to mount suggesting that Apple's AMOLED-based iPhone 8 flagship aka “iPhone Edition” may in fact launch later in the fourth quarter of 2017, unlike the refreshed LCD-based iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus that should hit store shelves shortly following an announcement in September.
Citing industry sources, DigiTimes reported Tuesday that touch panel maker TPK Holding won't begin churning out next-generation 3D Touch sensors for use in iPhone 8 before the fourth quarter of 2017.
Apple has reportedly moved ahead volume production for its bezel-less 10.5-inch iPad Pro to March and is expected to unveil the new tablet at an event in April to be held at the Steve Jobs Theater, DigiTimes reported Tuesday citing Taiwan-based supply chain makers. MacRumors said Apple could launch new gadgets next week.
Component vendor Lite-On Semi was mentioned in a recent Chinese-language Commercial Times report as a possible supplier of wireless charging parts destined for Apple's 2017 iPhones. According to Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, the supplier is expecting to see its revenues reach the peak for 2017 in the third quarter (when iPhone 8 is rumored to enter mass-production, mind you) thanks to robust demand for its power management chips used for wireless charging in smartphones and other devices.
Franco-Italian company STMicroelectronics used to be the sole supplier of accelerometers, gyroscopes and motion sensors for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices before Apple started dual-sourcing these microscopic components from both STMicroelectronics and Bosch Sensortec.
According to a report Wednesday by French blog iGeneration, the Cupertino company has tapped STMicroelectronics as a supplier for iPhone 8's 3D camera sensor that should support exciting capabilities such as 3D sensing and mapping, 3D selfies, augmented reality features, advanced facial recognition and more.
Without mentioning sources, DigiTimes reported Wednesday that the widely expected shift from LCD to OLED screens will necessitate a thin-film solution for iPhone 8's 3D Touch module instead of the older glass solution adopted for 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s/7 series. Suppliers behind the new 3D Touch modules are dropping big bucks on advanced factories to retain the precision that Apple demands.