Apple Considering Shift Away From Sony for Micro-OLED Displays in Future Vision Pro Headsets

[deconstruct60]

And China is not so hesitant because they hold a knife to Apple's throat by way of no access to the largest smartphone market in the world.

More so China willing to build vast cities of empty housing with no one to move in. ( Government throwing money away on a gamble something will work... and when it doesn't the country eats the costs. )

If Apple would pay to eat all the potential cancelled order costs Sony would go for it. Apple getting government subsidies to eat the overreach just mean more money for the Scrooge McDuck money pit. Subsidies , more lax environmental rules, cheap teenage labor . etc. Apple goes to China to 'save a buck' far more so than some 'threat'.

Over $3,400 headsets ( especially when Chinese currency is getting substantially weaker than the dollar) are not likely going to be a huge mega seller in China. (and the really rich people in China can just fly and get one in another country if they really want one. )

 

[name99]

"Sony, the current supplier of micro-OLED displays for Vision Pro, has apparently shown reservations about expanding its production capabilities for the components"

Oh Sony!
Since 1995, never losing an opportunity to lose an opportunity...

 

[lysingur]

Sony is very astute in not wanting to be beholden to Apple in expanding its production capacity just for Vision Pro. This is the strategy Apple uses to strong-arm suppliers in price negotiations—once the suppliers make all that investment in scaling up their production capacity, they can't simply scale down when Apple pulls the plug. They would then have to cut prices to keep Apple as a customer.

Sony must have seen that Vision Pro would be nothing but a niche product.

 

[btrach144]

It’ll be really interesting to see the sales numbers on this thing.

People say it costs a lot but we all know apple is going to offer 0% financing on it. How many people will go into debt?

 

[NT1440]

[/QUOTE]

Sony is very astute in not wanting to be beholden to Apple in expanding its production capacity just for Vision Pro. This is the strategy Apple uses to strong-arm suppliers in price negotiations—once the suppliers make all that investment in scaling up their production capacity, they can't simply scale down when Apple pulls the plug. They would then have to cut prices to keep Apple as a customer.

Sony must have seen that Vision Pro would be nothing but a niche product.

Sony can only produce a million of these displays currently, meaning in perfect conditions 500K Vision Pros are even possible to sell.

Given there are two Chinese fabs actively tooling out for production of this type of display, I would wager Sony did a cost/benefit analysis and determined with upcoming competition it’s not worth the capital investment to expand production of this display.

That’s how business is done. They’ll be one of several suppliers, a tidy side revenue stream but one without an explosive future. It’ll run steady state, they’re not going to abandon producing these after setting up a fab specifically for it.

 

[4tune8chance]

wow, did we learn nothing over the last few years, you can’t trust the CCP.

 

[seek3r]

Is vision pro technically vaporware until it is actually released?

Does everyone remember AirPower???! That turned out to be vaporware lol

No, because there's actually developers with hands on the product already

 

[Jensend]

Simplifying the pass through AR flow from having cameras input the outside world into opaque glasses to imitate the real world outside, to actually seeing the outside world with overlaid AR elements is going to require a screen that can become fully transparent while lighting up individual pixels for overlaying virtual elements.

Black would be their own pixels instead of absence of light. The latter already exists (variable opaqueness glass) while transparent displays are still in early stages. Both would need to be far more refined to work at the level required but if there's one company with the resources and motivation to accomplish this, it's Apple.

We already have pretty good transparent displays. And there are prototype displays that have per-pixel adjustable opacity. But I'm not sure how you could have a near-eye display with per-pixel adjustable opacity, because the opacity mask would be out of focus. If there is a way to do it, it is probably so complex and degrade the optics enough that you'd probably get better visual quality with video passthrough anyway.

 

[svish]

Interesting to hear more about the future models of Vision Pro

 

[rmoore1977]

Apple has a history of starting with off the shelf components then over time developing their own in-house technology. To get these small and light enough to fulfill the vision of smart glasses everywhere, they're going to have to invent something that doesn't yet exist – or acquire a company who will.

Simplifying the pass through AR flow from having cameras input the outside world into opaque glasses to imitate the real world outside, to actually seeing the outside world with overlaid AR elements is going to require a screen that can become fully transparent while lighting up individual pixels for overlaying virtual elements.

Black would be their own pixels instead of absence of light. The latter already exists (variable opaqueness glass) while transparent displays are still in early stages. Both would need to be far more refined to work at the level required but if there's one company with the resources and motivation to accomplish this, it's Apple.

What company do you think they’ll find to do this? They may already be supplying them.

 

[rmoore1977]

Sony's gonna prioritize the OLED displays for their PSVR 2 headsets, so if Apple wants to get Visions mass produced they'll have to find someone else to get panels from. Why not Samsung? They got experience with HMD displays since they used to make Windows Mixed Reality headsets

Read an article that says Sony gets the displays from TSMC. Will Apple just work directly with them?