Apple's iPhone struggles unravel ambitions of Japan Display

I could have told you this years ago, the future was clearly OLED and for Japan to just sit there doing nothing was its own fault. Sony did the same thing with Trinitron TV's, Sharp did exactly the same thing with LCD and now they are owned by a China company.

Chinese companies will end up dominating Japan in the next 20 to 30 years. The writing is on the wall.

No one should feel sorry for any company or business that does not have the foresight to look to the future and adapt it's product.

This is an example of what happened to US companies back in the day, the Japanese came in with newer and better products.

Wow, just WOW!  Take about BAD management! They make hi-tech parts but haven't mastered basic uses on calculators!

Toss in what must have been a HORRIBLE deal with Apple & then not realing thinking about the future

Hell I would be surprised if this factory would even be in use today

As others above said, THIS cycle which LONG AGO Japan dominated has been kicking Japans A$$ for the last 25yrs unabated & these people seem surprised!!

HELLO!!!

Rule of thumb is this:

Japan - excellent craftsmen but only let down by bad business accumen.

Japan - excellent craftsmen but only let down by bad business accumen.

Apple itself may well have started to slide. Its latest phones have not been selling as well as anticipated in major markets and it has been forced into discounting. Electronic trade magazines frequently carry stories asking whether Apple has lost its mojo.

My two teenage sons insisted on iPhones for their middle school graduation presents. My Huawei phone does what their iPhones do at one-third the price.

One of the few advantages of age is perspective. I can remember when Xerox, Kodak, Motorola, IBM, Nokia, and others had the kind of image Apple now has. All of these companies have essentially given up on the consumer market. So too for some Japanese companies. But, Apple has essentially no products for the industrial sector so it is rather more vulnerable than companies such as SONY that are very strong in some industrial sectors.

Apple told its suppliers that it will switch over to OLED by 2020, no more LCD iphones.

If Japan Display cannot produce 30 million OLED panels by 2020, then that's the end of Japan Display.

@Wolfpack

Chinese companies will end up dominating Japan in the next 20 to 30 years. The writing is on the wall.

Not will, Chinese already do, with the single exception of automobile.

Chinese have overtaken Japanese in following industries

-5G

-Movies

-Aerospace

-EV Battery

-Chip design

-Electronics

Automobile is the last industry in which Japan is still ahead of China, but Koreans have overtaken Japanese in automobile.

OLED is bad for eyes. I'll never use it

Why has Japan Display NOT diversify its potential application? Cars all have display these days, and LCD can be cheaper and brighter, then there's outdoor screens, large format dcreens etc. No investment appetite to develop and venture into new space?

I shudder to think of leadership in Japanese electronics these days, they should have been dominating the drones industry by now given the long history of investment in robotics, instead we get retro Playstation and Nintendo consoles...sigh and yawn.

It's absolutely ridiculous how Japanese executive "management" in the industrial sector has been doing business in the last decade or so.

Buying goods directly from the factory in China is a doddle and all specs are in English with PayPal for payment.

Compare that with Japan where foreign custom service is rare and refusal after refusal is the norm.

The Chinese go the extra mile for the customer which the Japanese dont or won’t and with Chinese quality becoming better with time then......

Japan Display and Sharp makes extremely reliable and the most color-accurate LCDs for iPhones and iPads. The problem with that is once you own an Apple device with Japan Display or Sharp component there’s almost no point in upgrading every year or two... and this is no bueno on Apple’s bottom line.

Apple’s solution? Switch to disposable hot garbage displays known as ORGANIC light-emitting diodes! Try gaming with the latest smartphones with oled displays and you will easilly create burn-in spots. This is a very devious way to get consumers to upgrade every year or two because the oled gets burn-in and worn down with every use!

Absolutely favorable for Apple & shareholders because of that constant replacement... and bad for consumers/end users who want extremely reliable and accurate display that JD and sharp (used to) offer.

So the factory is putting out technology that is becoming obsolete and relies on infinite growth of a certain product which is being phased out? Who could have possibly thought that this wouldn't be a sustainable business model?

Actually it's not just cause it's oled but recently other phone companies are releasing a bendable screen:

https://youtu.be/9fyI-SEnNl8

Truth is that Japan missed the tech bus by some 5 years - an abysmal span of time in technology. I remember that when Japan Display announced the new factory, some said it was already obsolete.