Samsung plans to slash its OLED panel output in response to Apple’s decision to cut production of iPhone X due to “weak demand”, the Nikkei Asian Review reported on Tuesday. Samsung will make OLED panels for 20 million fewer iPhones at its South Chungcheong plant in the January to March quarter, a lot lower than its original goal of supplying panels for 45 million to 50 million iPhones, according to the paper.
Samsung is said to have made a 13.5 trillion won ($12.6 billion) capital investment in anticipation of the originally expected number of OLED panel orders from Apple. The new target reportedly reduces plant production to roughly 60 percent of original forecasts, and Samsung’s display business is expected to suffer revenue declines for the first half of 2018. Samsung stock fell as much as 2.3 percent in morning trade, reported Reuters, while shares of some Japanese OLED component makers also declined.
Today’s report follows previous claims by Nikkei that “weak demand” for iPhone X has forced Apple to slash its production target by half in the three month period from January. However the claim doesn’t tally with Apple’s own results reported at its recent quarterly conference call earlier this month, and it’s unclear which supply chain sources the publication is relying on. Apple CEO Tim Cook has dismissed these types of reports in the past, suggesting that the company’s supply chain is very complex and that any singular data point is not a reliable indicator of what’s actually going on.
During its record financial results report for the first fiscal quarter of 2018 (which corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2017), Cook said the iPhone X was the top-selling iPhone model every week since it had debuted in November. iPhone shipments were down 1.2 percent year-over-year compared to the year-ago quarter, but only because of an extra sales week last year – Apple’s growth was actually 21 percent year-over-year on an adjusted basis.
Related Roundup: 2018 iPhonesTag: nikkei.com
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