Apple’s display supply chain is seeing a major shift this month as BOE struggles with persistent production issues, as reported by The Elec. For the second month in a row, the Chinese display giant has failed to meet quality standards for iPhone OLED panels. This setback has forced Apple to pivot quickly, transferring orders for millions of units to Samsung Display.
The production hiccups began in November and December of last year and have continued into January 2026. Reports indicate that a specific manufacturing process has caused significant quality defects, leading BOE to halt production on several lines entirely. While BOE has been a key partner in Apple’s push to diversify its suppliers, this prolonged disruption is raising serious questions about its reliability for high-end models.
The issues aren’t just affecting the latest flagships; they span across multiple generations of the iPhone. Specifically, the production lines for the iPhone 15, iPhone 16, and the current iPhone 17 have all been hit. This is particularly surprising for the legacy models like the iPhone 15 and 16, which use LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon) technology—a standard that BOE had previously mastered with stable yields.
Over the last two months, Samsung has absorbed the shortfall, taking over the production of millions of panels that were originally allocated to BOE. Because Samsung possesses significantly larger manufacturing capacity and more advanced facilities than its competitors, it is the only supplier capable of handling such a massive, sudden increase in volume.
While Apple has moved the entire iPhone 17 lineup to LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) displays to support ProMotion across all models, BOE has struggled to keep up with the technical difficulty of this newer tech. Even more concerning for the Chinese firm is that they are now seeing “bizarre” failures in the older LTPS tech, which was supposed to be their stable bread and butter.
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