How Apple's Billion Dollar Sapphire Bet Will Pay Off

alphadogg writes: "Apple is making a billion dollar bet on sapphire as a strategic material for mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad and perhaps an iWatch. Exactly what the company plans to do with the scratch-resistant crystal – and when – is still the subject of debate. Apple is creating its own supply chain devoted to producing and finishing synthetic sapphire crystal in unprecedented quantities. The new Mesa, Arizona plant, in a partnership with sapphire furnace maker GT Advanced Technologies, will make Apple one of the world's largest sapphire producers when it reaches full capacity, probably in late 2014. By doing so, Apple is assured of a very large amount of sapphire and insulates itself from the ups and downs of sapphire material pricing in the global market."

Comments

Re:Well.

[gnupun]

Sapphire is second hardest material (1st is diamond) known and much more scratch resistant than gorilla glass. This is the best feature of sapphire glass. Check out the youtube video in this article -- even a concrete block can't scratch the sapphire glass. However, sapphire glass has many disadvantages:

• *10x more expensive than gorilla glass
• *1.6 times heavier than gorilla glass
• *Higher refractive index so it's dimmer and therefore consumes more battery power to get same brightness as gorilla glass. A phone user is very interested in this property.
• *Not environmentally friendly (energy consumption very high to produce glass)