iPhone 8 Curved OLED Rumors Strengthened after Apple Buys 60M OLED Panels

Apple and Samsung have one of the fiercest rivalries in all of the mobile phone world. Apple makes the iPhone and Samsung makes the Galaxy series of smartphones. The two firms battle it out for the dollars of the smartphone buying consumers around the world.

It can’t sit well with Apple that it has to buy many of the screens for its smartphones from Samsung. Rumors have continued to suggest that the iPhone 8 will have an OLED screen with curved edges. Those curved edges are something that Samsung had made very popular among smartphone buyers via its Galaxy S7 Edge devices.

The rumors about the iPhone 8 getting curved screen have grown stronger on a report out of Korea that claims Apple has just purchased 60 million OLED panels from Samsung Display. The new screen deal is said to be worth billions of dollars. Appel purchased another 100 million OLED panels from Samsung Display back in April 2016. Combined, the scene purchases that Apple has made total 160 million units.

Consider that Apple sold about 200 million iPhones last year, this indicates that Samsung could be supplying 80% of the screens that Apple needs to build its next-gen iPhone 8 smartphone. The first iPhone screen purchase is said to have cost Apple $6.96 billion with the latest purchases ringing up at a bit less, but still massive, $4.35 billion.

The prices indicate that the curved OLED screens cost Apple around $70 each. While we don’t know how much the other components for the next iPhone might cost, the high price of the screen alone suggests that the rumors that the iPhone 8 might cost $1,000 each is a bit more believable.