Apple could owe Samsung Display “hundreds of billions of won” in penalties for not buying enough OLED screens — found in iPhone XS, XS Max and X — due to lackluster iPhone sales, according to Korean outlet ETNews. That’d be about $90 million in fines, which isn’t much to Apple, but could strain on its relationship with the supplier.
The Cupertino, California giant insisted that Samsung Display build a factory for the exclusive purpose of making OLED screens, saying it’d need 100 million iPhone displays a year, our sister site ZDNet noted. The weak sales hit Samsung Display hard — causing operating profits to fall from 5.7 trillion won (around $4.9 billion) in 2017 to 2.62 trillion won (about $2.2 billion) in 2018.
