Apple Depends On Korea’s Samsung, LG For iPhone X Parts

Apple may have impressed a lot of consumers when it unveiled the iPhone X during its Sept. 12 press event. However, the Cupertino giant couldn’t have created its 10th anniversary iPhone without the help of its partners, especially its suppliers from South Korea. A new report is now shedding light on how Apple is quite dependent on Korean part makers for important components of the iPhone X.

On Thursday, The Investor reported about Apple’s deep involvement with Samsung and LG just to realize its 10th anniversary handset. The publication pointed out that two of the distinctive new features of the iPhone X, including all of their related parts, are made by Samsung Display and LG Innotek. The two features are none other than the iPhone X’s OLED display panel and the 3D-sensing camera.

While LG Innotek has been supplying Apple with camera modules for some time now, this is the first time that the Korea-based firm is producing 3D-sensing modules for Apple. It’s also worth noting that this is the first time that Apple entered a deal with Samsung Display in order for the latter to supply the former with OLED panels for its flagship smartphone.

Other units of Samsung and LG are also benefitting from Apple’s iPhone X. For instance, Samsung Electronics’ parts unit Samsung Electro-Mechanics is the one that supplies multi-layer ceramic capacitors to Apple. This component helps in feeding electric power to the iPhone X’s chipset. The same firm manufactures the rigid flexible printed circuit board that connects the chips with the other parts of the hardware, such as the camera and display.

Even though this is not the first time that Samsung Electro-Mechanics is supplying Apple with multi-layer ceramic capacitors, the partnership between the two has become more meaningful since the parts maker is now tasked to provide more MLCCs for the newly announced iPhone X. The increase in Apple’s demand for MLCCs has to do with the enhanced performance of the new flagship iPhone, as pointed out by Korean news site ET News.

Another component that Samsung is supplying Apple with is RFPCB or Rigid Flexible PCB, which is essential to the OLED display. Samsung Electro-Mechanics isn’t the sole supplier of this part though. It is just one of the three Korean producers of RFPCB for the iPhone X. The other two companies were identified to be BHE and Interflex.

Apple’s dependence to South Korean companies does not end there however. Samsung SDI and LG Chem are the ones that supply the Cupertino giant with batteries for the iPhone X as well as the yearly upgrades, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Among the three new iOS 11-running handsets though, the iPhone X is the only one that utilizes a combination of two batteries to form a 2,700 mAh unit.

The partnership between Apple and LG is also expected to blossom even more next year. Last June, IBTimes learned that Apple has invested around $2.70 billion in LG Display because the latter will be joining Samsung Display in manufacturing OLED panels for future iPhones. At the time, industry sources claimed that Apple will be officially switching to OLED screens for all of its iPhone models starting in 2019, so this pretty much explains why LG Display was tapped by Apple.