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Behind Apple's Sapphire Screen Debacle
Frankie70 (803801) writes Apple invested more than $1 billion in an effort to make sapphire one of iPhone 6's selling point. But the iPhone 6 was released without the sapphire screen. GT Advanced Technologies, the small company chosen to supply Apple with enormous quantities of cheap sapphire, declared bankruptcy a month later. Recent documents from GT's bankruptcy proceedings, and conversations with people familiar with operations at Apple and GT, provide several clues as to what went wrong. GT said that to save costs, Apple decided not to install backup power supplies, and multiple outages ruined whole batches of sapphire. The terms Apple negotiated committed GT to supplying a huge amount of sapphire, but put Apple under no obligation to buy it. In its bankruptcy documents, GT would later accuse Apple of using "bait-and-switch" tactics, and said the terms of the deal were "onerous and massively one-sided."
In other news: A company so desperate to get into bed with Apple signs away their soul for rainbows and promises.
"Apple ruined us by trying to buy our product"
Anybody mind telling me what sapphire is & why its so special?
Maybe suppliers will now reconsider getting involved with Apple. Large companies with extreme market power will often bully their suppliers. It is common for large customers to make demands for price reductions below the contract price, with threats to dump the supplier if they refuse. Having a single customer that makes up most of your sales is a significant risk to any business and something that has to be carefully managed.
Agreed. Plus I believe Apple merely lent money and secured loans for GT -- they didn't invest in them and push them around; they're a public company.
...acted in bad faith? What a surprise.
In its bankruptcy documents, GT would later accuse Apple of using "bait-and-switch" tactics, and said the terms of the deal were "onerous and massively one-sided." (Emphasis mine...)
And Apple gets blamed for this shortcoming? Why did GT sign on the god damned dotted line?
If you sign a contract with apple or microsoft (and dozens of other giant companys), you ARE getting the short shitty end of the deal.
If you ever manage to come out ahead when dealing with these companys it will be a miracle.
The power supplies were their bad. Not Apple's. Apple contracted for finished product, and didn't care about how it was made.
The easy thing to do would have been to contract with Samsung if Apple wouldn't agree to buy; nothing gets Apple to lock up a supply chain vendor's entire production of something faster than offering to sell it to an Apple competitor in roughly the same market.
They also should have incorporated the production company separately from the furnace company to provide fusable links so that they could jettison the production company without jettisoning the profits that selling the furnaces to the production company got them.
This was just basically a company that couldn't do what it promised, and was bad at business to boot, and is now trying to get out from under its creditors by spreading liability to a third party with deep pockets.
Apple intimidated a smaller company into an unworkable deal.
The smaller company that supposed to be an expert in the field agreed to sign an unworkable deal.
Both failed to amend the deal in time to fix the debacle. Businesses amend deals all the time. Provided the fundamentals were good, all they had to do was communicate timely.
This is a pretty common story really. Doing business with apple is very often bad news.
What happens is usually that a business seeing an opportunity to sell to apple starts bending over backwards to get the socket, this takes a lot of resources (Because apple always require a lot of bending over backwards) and the end product is usually something so specialized for the purpose that only apple is the relevant buyer.
So while you can make a bunch of money short term, you tend to lose your preexisting customers as you focused all your resources on pleasing apple. The day apple moves on to a different supplier you are stuck with no customer base and poor prospects. Your only hope is to stay on good terms with apple while you gradually wean yourself off them (Good luck with that). If that fails you better hope you made enough money while it lasted to make it worth it.
Still the contracts and requirements are there, it's not like apple is breaking the law, any business owner has a responsibility to understand the consequences of the deals they make.
Sounds an awful lot like Jack Tramiel's questionable business practices while at Commodore:
1. Make a large order to a supplier for parts
2. Supplier runs up costs and works to complete the order
3. Fail to pay the supplier in a timely manner
4. Let the supplier go bankrupt
5. Buy the supplier at liquidated prices
6. Profit!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I agree.
From my own experience, our company chose not to deal with a very large potential buyer because if we got too involved with them they could ruin us in a day if they decided to pull their support. The investment on our side would have been too great, it was too risky. We don't regret it.
It's not that cut and dried. Apple was the one who insisted on renegotiating the contract, as well as not installing a backup power supply for each furnace and starting production in a non-commissioned plant.
Apple originally offered to buy sapphire-growing furnaces from GT. But according to sources familiar with negotiations, after five months Apple demanded a major change in terms, requiring GT to supply the sapphire itself. In fact, Apple wanted GT to build the world’s largest factory to produce the stuff—more than doubling the world’s entire sapphire production capacity.
Producing sapphire requires a very clean environment, but ongoing construction at the factory meant that sapphire was grown "in a highly contaminated environment that adversely affected the quality of sapphire material," according to GT. It also requires uninterrupted supplies of water and electricity to regulate the temperature of the molten aluminum oxide used to form the boule. GT said that to save costs, Apple decided not to install backup power supplies, and multiple outages ruined whole batches of sapphire.
Make no mistake about it - Apple was in the driver's seat in this mess. It was their deadline for the iPhone6 that set the stage for attempts to grow sapphire in an unfinished factory. But Apple will find a way to make money out of this.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
IBM had used Micropolis drives back when 5MB was a common size. They insisted that Micropolis buy new production equipment to make the 40s in enough quantity to supply the projected PC demand, then IBM chose another vendor, leaving Micropolis with a lot of production capacity for which to pay, and no customer. Bye-Bye, Micropolis.
Breaking news: GT blames Apple for their bankruptcy
Coming up in tomorrow's hot news: man blames someone else for his failure.
Apple originally offered to buy sapphire-growing furnaces from GT. But according to sources familiar with negotiations, after five months Apple demanded a major change in terms, requiring GT to supply the sapphire itself. In fact, Apple wanted GT to build the world’s largest factory to produce the stuff—more than doubling the world’s entire sapphire production capacity.
In the end, the fundamentals weren't good for either party. GT is bankrupt, and Apple had to switch their plans from sapphire at the last minute.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Understanding how business is done in the second decade of the 21st century requires a level of cynicism that I'm just not willing to endure.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They could still have ended negotiations. That said- it would take an extremely good businessman to do it at that point, most would already be counting the money Apple would make them. But if a deal is wrong you need to walk away. They're hardly the first company to fail because they made a bad decision to take on a contract they weren't ready for.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Uhm, you're supposed to notice this before you sign, not after you go bankrupt.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Who doesn't?
I newer understood the "not installing a backup power supply for each furnace" situation.
Who owned and was responsible for the factory? The story has always been that GT produced Sapphire, and that apple maybe wanted to buy it.
So why did GT let apple control anything at all, about their factories?
From the article " after five months Apple demanded a major change in terms, requiring GT to supply the sapphire itself. In fact, Apple wanted GT to build the world’s largest factory to produce the stuff"
So If Apple wanted GT to supply the sapphire, why did they have any say in the day to day running of the factories. Sounds like GT gave far to much factory control to Apple for no reason at all.
The salespeople saw money. The business people, who would normally assess risk, got blinded by the prospect of making huge amounts of money. The engineers who could see disaster coming were not consulted or ignored.
Except that Apple had no way to intimidated GT. GT did not have any need for Apple, and they could simply have walked away from Apple, and continued their business as before.
Sure, it's great to drive the a good bargain with your suppliers. But, when you drive your suppliers out of business, particularly a sole supplier, maybe it's better to let them make a little money too.
Probably the GT execs ran out of money (by greedy bonus payouts to themselves and/or incompetence in planning) and had to go begging to Apple for more money for backup power supplies, at which point Apple said, "no, why didn't you ask for that in the first place?"
Apple would never have given the money to GT if they knew the odds of failure were so high, GT must have done a song and dance to Apple that GT was able to execute. You can see other suppliers to Apple not having such a rough go of it because you may have to promise big but you have to deliver big. I would believe that the terms and investment that Apple has given to the other suppliers are similar in form.
Not much sympathy for either party from me, as I'm sure both companies understood the nature of the contract. I wonder, though, how much it has cost Apple in sales and good will to be putting out a product without the top-of-the-line screen. Probably a lot more than they were trying to squeeze out of this deal with their ruthless negotiating tactics. This is the sort of thing Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) was going on about when he advocated seeking out the win-win deal. If your partners don't prosper, it will always come back to hurt you.
Is it feasible to make sapphire smartphone screens which are not too shatter-prone? or not?
Are the properties of the material at that physical thickness and expanse just not good enough?
Or could it be done, if done more carefully?
Never mind the bolloxed business deal and manufacturing process in this case, is it feasible in principle at this stage of physics and engineering knowhow?
If so, isn't someone else going to pick up the slack here?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
it would take an extremely good businessman to [terminate] at that point, most would already be counting the money Apple would make them. But if a deal is wrong you need to walk away. They're hardly the first company to fail because they made a bad decision to take on a contract they weren't ready for.
The Register ran an opinion piece when the details on this story were first appearing a couple of weeks back. It noted an almost unbelievable point others have commented on elsewhere in this thread:-
[The usual form of the contract is that companies agree] to build whatever to [the agreed] standard and by that time. Excellent. If we do so then you have to either take them and pay for them or if you don't take them you've still got to pay for them. If we don't make them to standard or in time then here's the damages we'll pay. But if we hit the spot then you're committed to pay for them.
But here's what it actually did sign up to:
Those agreements, said Daniel Squiller, GTAT's chief operating officer, were almost entirely one-sided. By the time Cupertino's lawyers were done, he said, GTAT was presented with an deal that, among other terms, required it to: commit to producing millions of units of sapphire, even though Apple was not obligated to buy any of them.
Something the author describes as "sheer lunacy". Either they were utterly, *utterly* struck blind or there is something strange and dubious going on. Oddly, the "struck blind" explanation isn't as improbable going by a comment in the letters section (from "Edwin"):-
The sexiness of having Apple (or some other A-list brand) as a major customer is extremely seductive to many 'executives'. Not only because it's great advertising, but the bolstering of the supplier's individual executive ego.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I think the smarter bears structure their companies so that if a larger customer burns you, it just sinks one of your shell corps which typically has few real assets.
This isn't uncommon in industry (it's also not the normal way of things). If we want to to be certain that a supplier builds something the right way, we might specify every detail of the tooling, and sometimes buy it and install it ourselves.
--Jim (me)
it was never about "need".
nothing wrong with good old fashion greed..
Cretins think material science is 'magic', and with enough 'effort' a wonder material can be made with only 'positive' properties.
Sapphire ***IS*** extremely true scratch resistant (as in the surface atoms resist displacement) because sapphire is BRITTLE. Apple needed a 'magic' material to better 'Gorilla Glass' and the like, so they acted like every Slashdot Beta, and indulged the fantasy that 'science' 'solves' everything with enough money.
Come the day, sapphire iPhones suffered horrible drop failure at the expected rate- with the added 'bonus' of employing a horribly expensive 'solution'. Apple learnt the hard way that such materials are great if you can afford to make the 'window' either very thick or very small.
Here's the thing. Apple has run out of 'low hanging fruit' 'innovation' for their very expensive executive toys. Even spending insane amounts of money on R+D and materials no longer buys Apple a significant advantage against much cheaper rivals in the marketplace. Apple IS better if your metric is trivial and childish, but even for Apple fans, 'better' no longer means what it did a few years back.
Since Apple is insanely rich, I would advise every dishonest Human with a technology bent to visit Apple HQ and pitch some pie-in-the-sky magic tech solution, for never has the company been so desperate to believe such nonsense. Honestly, I'd expect even an average 12-year old science student to know that as hardness improves (ie scratch resistance) so does brittleness. No-one at Apple had even this basic awareness, so they're clearly vulnerable for any sort of future con.
risk is nothing unusual in the business. all GT would have had to do was either:
- pad the contract enough to account for the risk (they may have, i've not read the contract)
OR
- say "no" to the amendment.
worst case scenario they would have lost a (granted, large) customer. instead they went bankrupt.
the fundamentals _were_ good. namely one side clearly wanted sapphire and had plenty of cash. the other side knew how to make it and had the expertise.
only goes to show that fundamentals alone are not enough to guarantee success.. quite frankly thats why not every geek (yours truly included) can grow a successful business.
last point i'll make is, i wouldn't draw long term conclusions out of this snafu. business deals fall through. shit happens. hopefully both sides learned something.
They don't seem to care about losing customers. Perhaps they know that their customers are mostly fans who will always buy whatever overpriced gadget they throw at them, as long as the new product carries a new buzzword or two. That's what the sapphire screen was, a buzzword, and that is made clear by the fact that instead of switching to something about as effective like Gorilla glass, they shipped a scratch-able glass screen instead. It was not about using the best material for their screen, it was just about using the most marketable material. When the plan failed, their response was to change the marketing campaign.
In the meantime, at the office, all iphones without protectors are full of scratches, while the Samsungs have mostly pristine screens...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
GT never produced sapphire prior to this arrangement, they manufactured photo-voltaic silicon. Apple was looking to produce sapphire on a scale needed for their iPhone, something nobody had done before. GT convinced them they could do it. Apple required an exclusivity clause because they didn't want to invest any money unless they got all the sapphire and in return, the production process would be owned by GT. Apple bought the facilities in Arizona and loaned GT money to manage the operations. It was a large gamble that GT was willing to take. Apple's position carried less risk because they have a strong cash position and could continue to use Gorilla glass. When production yields where bad and GT didn't meet its obligations, Apple decided not to buy any sapphire. For its part, Apple did agree to renegotiate the contract to help GT, as they held out hope that GT could perfect the process after the iPhone 6 shipped. Unfortunately, GT's cash position deteriorated to a point where they needed bankruptcy protection.
Signing a dangerous contract is one thing, but in addition apparently the Sapphire was not of the promised non-brittle innovative kind.
But, did they switch. That would have delayed the next roll-out. There was no delay. Jut the opposite. On time. So it was for an upcoming project. Second part, they took over the plant and the workers. Project is still on. But are they after a thicker, less flexible phone, or another device that's already for production.
I once contracted for a medium-small company that was under contract with Disney to supply services. Disney was a royal pain in the ass to this company in that they were super picky, but the company used them for bragging rights when attempting to sign on other companies. Eventually they dropped Disney when it was realized the bragging rights were not worth the abuse.
Table-ized A.I.
Anyone who's not a bigoted, trailer trash raised moron?
Who's to blame for that? My first thought is of the shareholders and employees. I suspect such a decision is evidence of culpability in class action litigation.
With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the student march that night;
The quads were filled with rent-a-cops and not a picket sign in sight;
With Cooney busted for possession, and Barrows, the riot laws;
A sickly silence fell upon the supporters of The Cause.
A straggling few got up to go, in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which "springs eternal in the human breast;"
They thought, If only Gay PopeRatzo could be rallying that mob,
We'd put up even money now, with PopeRatzo at the quads.
But Flynn preceded Ratzo, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a no-good and the latter was a fake;
Forlorn, that stricken multitude discouraged by the odds,
For there seemed but little chance of Ratzo's getting to the quads.
But Flynn let fly a bottle, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, set a bomb off in the hall,
And when the dust had lifted and men saw what had occurred,
Jimmy beaned the Dean of Students, while the bombed out library burned.
Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell,
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell,
A Harley roared up from the street, and was tearing up the sod,
And PopeRatzo, Gay PopeRatzo, was advancing through the quads.
There was ease in Ratzo's manner as he wheeled into his place;
There was pride in Ratzo's bearing and a smile on Ratzo's face,
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly gave a nod,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt `twas Gay PopeRatzo at the quads.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he gunned the throttle loud;
Five thousand tongues applauded as he signaled to the crowd.
And while the nervous officers grabbed the night sticks from their hips,
Defiance gleamed in Ratzo's eye, a sneer curled Ratzo's lip.
And now a can of tear gas came hurtling through the air,
And PopeRatzo stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there,
Close by the haughty Ratzo , the can unheeded sped --
"That ain't my style," said PopeRatzo . "Break it up!" the coppers said.
From the streets, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill them; kill the pigs!" shouted someone from the mob;--
And PopeRatzo guns his engine, and wipes-out on the lawn.
With a fist of protest shaking, PopeRatzo's visage shone;
He jumped back on his Harley; he bade the march go on;
The Harley takes off through the quads, 'till it hits a vicious bump;
And PopeRatzo sails through the air, landing smack upon his rump.
"Fascists!" he screeched, "Capitalist, Imperialist, Racist, Sexist pigs!"
"If I must I'll ride a tricycle, but we'll have this march - you dig?"
They saw his face grow stern and cold; they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Gay PopeRatzo wouldn't lose that bike again!
The sneer is gone from Ratzo's lip; his teeth are clenched in hate;
He sniffs with cruel derision as he lets go of the brake.
And now he throws it into first, the clutch he now he lets go,
And now the air is shattered as the bike takes off - alone.
Oh! somewhere there's a campus town where they drum and chant all night.
They protest for the rain forest, and demand the polar bear’s rights.
And somewhere bongs are being passed, and somewhere radicals shout;
But there is no joy at Old State U -- Gay PopeRatzo has Wiped Out!
But it sounds like Apple was bankrolling GT for the factory. which means they negotiated some kind of investment budget. Apple probably went through the list, found what sounds like excesses and asked GT if all this was really necessary or if it could be done cheaper. Apparently GT failed to justify the cost, so it was stricken from the final budget. When shit hit the fan it might have been too late to start redesigning and they were already behind schedule and budget with botched batches, GT might not have had the financial muscle to fix it and Apple might be concerned about throwing good money after bad. After all, this is how most terrible investment decisions are made, we're already $500 million down the hole so we need to spend a hundred more to finish it. Then we're already $600 million down the hole so we need to spend a hundred more to finish it and so on. Apple had a reasonable plan B by sticking with Gorilla Glass so they weren't pot commited as they'd say in poker.
Remember, just because GT can point to this and say that's why it failed doesn't mean it'd be a success otherwise as they might have stumbled on the next hurdle too. After all, if the product that did come out okay was that great I'm sure Apple would have been more willing to see it through too, unless they decided it was cheaper to let GT fail and pick up the pieces. I really doubt it's as easy as Apple buying GT's assets, installing a few UPSes in the factory and they're ready to go for the iPhone 6s. Like they say, production at this scale had never been attempted before which generally means you have to expect the unexpected. GT seems to have bet everything on things going according to plan, they gambled and lost. It's pretty cheap to try blaming Apple for their own botched execution, they're a business and don't just throw money around. If they failed to get sufficient investment that's nobody but GT's fault.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Not if you already invested too much, since you go bankrupt then. (I don't know if this was the case at this point)
This sounds like a contract without legal consideration, which would have effectively invalidated the contract since it required GTAT to make all the commitments and Apple to not.
It wouldn't be surprising if the top guys at GT received their golden parachutes.
If GT is the Supplier, why would Apple have to supply furnaces at GT's factories? Isn't that GT's responsibility?
I was in the same position with Disney once. Royal pains in the butt - awful to work with. But it was at a time when they were one of very few studios offering work at the time. It was either take it or starve. Had to just grin and bear it.
Looks like their infamous CSM team strikes again
It is general practice in OEM/ODM manufacturing that the buyer decides methods of production, especially QA and even logistics, maybe even HR... It is the sole responsibility of manufacturer to decide the situation is viable or not. They can either choose to go with the deal or not. It is their (claimed only in this case) expertise in the first place which attracts buyer to their facility. If they are not able to see or tell the problems in the business model on table it is their fault not to make corrections before the problems' occurrence.
I wonder, though, how much it has cost Apple in sales and good will to be putting out a product without the top-of-the-line screen.
It dies; like every other top of the line smart phone the iPhone 6/+ uses Gorilla Glass.
In theory Sapphire about have been the new top of the line, but since nothing else uses anything better than what it ships with now why would Apple be losing sales over it?
Note that the Gorilla Glass guys claim Sapphire might have better scratch resistance, but is not as good in terms of shattering - and Gorilla Glass 4 supposedly does as well in terms of resisting scratches while having even better shatter resistance. So it could be Apple dodged a bullet by not having screens that shattered more easily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps they know that their customers are mostly fans who will always buy whatever overpriced gadget they throw at them
Or it could be Apple Haters do not and never will understand the reasons why people buy iPhones, and keep buying them after the first one.
It's also always been a puzzle to be how Apple Haters claim Apple has over-priced phones when the are the same price in and out of contract as other supposedly high-end phones.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They always have. The original iPhone was the first smartphone to use Gorilla glass, created by Corning at Apple's prompting. iPhones have continued to use the best available Gorilla glass continually on every single iPhone since. The screen on a Samsung is no more scratch resistant than the iPhone--your anecdotes are either coincidence or just you making shit up. Guess where my money is.
" Either they were utterly, *utterly* struck blind or there is something strange and dubious going on. "
Or they were led on by Apple and a bit naive. They probably over-extended themselves trying to please Apple on the implied promise of a large contract. Then Apple renegotiated on unfair terms. At that point GT had a choice: Tell Apple to get lost and sink the business attempting futile legal remedy, or hope everything goes OK and the business doesn't sink later. Otherwise it'd be a huge co-incidence that Apple suddenly decided to renegotiate on extremely unfair terms. They wouldn't have done this if they didn't already think they had them over a barrel.
It appears that if Apple hadn't been such control freaks over decisions they had no expertise in (Hardly a new thing with Apple), then GT was likely to come through OK with the hope strategy.
Nice straw man....
So one more example that, in the corporate world, a verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You'd think that sooner or later people would stop having to learn that one for themselves. I suppose some people like to gamble, but if a company doesn't include verbal agreements in the written contract shouldn't your first assumption be that they plan to screw you over sooner or later? Or are at least including it in their contingency plans.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So one more example that, in the corporate world, a verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Who makes a 500 million dollar deal based on a verbal agreement? You also took GTAT's word hook, line, and sinker.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I guarantee the GT executives all got dirty filthy rich off of the failure.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Eventually they dropped Disney when it was realized the bragging rights were not worth the abuse.
The problem is that- depending upon the contract- the smaller company being screwed over is now in a position where they *can't* pull out of the contract because their large customer has them over a barrel. They've expanded and/or dedicated significant resources to supplying and pleasing that customer they thought would be a cash cow- possibly dropping other markets- and if the large company was to terminate the contract as threatened, they'd then have a massive production operation to fund with no-one to buy the end result.
It's either that quick death, or the slow death of having your margins ruthlessly squeezed beyond a sustainable point.
From another letter in the comments section of that article (from "Mugs"):-
I was once stuck on a train with a colleague ranting about a similar contract. The contract was in the 40s between Woolworth and his grandfather who ran a broom factory. Woolies started off with a small order, gradually increased until they took all the output then drove the price down until the factory went bust.
This was behaviour I was already familiar with relating to Wal-Mart, but it shows you it happened even back then. You can bet your life that in every case, the large customer knew exactly how this was going to play out in advance.
See this:- The Wal-Mart you don't know
And this:- The Man Who Said "No" to Wal-Mart
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
" Either they were utterly, *utterly* struck blind or there is something strange and dubious going on. "
Or they were led on by Apple and a bit naive. They probably over-extended themselves trying to please Apple on the implied promise of a large contract.
That's essentially what I was implying by the first of those two options.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
But GT signed up for this. When I had my small business, we turned down big contracts regularly. You can't have a single client be 90% of your business, because if anything glitches,you're out of business. We would never take on a job that was more than half of our annual revenues, and we only took on one job like that at a time, filling the rest of the calendar with smaller jobs.
for someone to pick up sapphire growing furnaces and know how 10cents on the dollar
Pioneers are the people lying face down with arrows in their backs
Guess all the normal people are eating turkey. This turned into another /. Apple bashing masturbation festival.
Seriously, in all of the posts NO ONE mentions that Sapphire was NEVER supposed to be in the screen of the iPhone 6? This is an incorrectly-parroted rumor started by a business analyst, that, later made up a story why it didn't happen.
ALSO, ignore the contract, take a look at ALL of the information on GT, and it looks like the execs rode a huge pump-and-dump ring . . . but hey, Apple, so fuck the truth.
and lost.
to buy the new equipment, which Apple provided. I wouldn't be surprised if they would only agree to loan enough money for the minimal amount of redundancy required.
My guess is that at some point Apple decided the new manufacturing technology was unlikely to work in their timescale, and was not going to make its plans dependent on it (I imagine this was shortly before it backed out of acquiring the manufacturing equipment.) At this point, GT became the party desperately seeking a deal, and Apple effectively said 'show us, and we will consider it.'
This isn't uncommon in industry (it's also not the normal way of things). If we want to to be certain that a supplier builds something the right way, we might specify every detail of the tooling, and sometimes buy it and install it ourselves.
I think the fact that Apple did not indicates that it did not think there was much chance of success, and was not, by then, expecting (or even much hoping) to ship with a sapphire screen.
reminds me of coverage of deals Walmart entered into with many suppliers in its history where they become the vast majority of some vendors products then finds a cheaper source and leaves them screwed over from expansion costs with no place to sell their new manufacturing capacity.
It's not that "at least the original iPhone had the Gorilla Glass"--it's that "Gorilla Glass exists *because of* the original iPhone". Other phones have Gorilla Glass because they copied the iPhone. Every single iPhone version has had the latest and greatest version of Gorilla Glass (of which there have been several iterations). This is all pretty common knowledge.
I have no idea why your personal experience is different. Possibly it's because in your area there are a lot more iPhone users than Samsung Galaxy users (e.g., in the US there are 1.5x as many iPhone users as Samsung Galaxy users).
I've carried an iPhone for 7 years and have never scratched the screen--by your scientific method I guess that proves that iPhones are unscratchable.
reminds me of coverage of deals Walmart entered into with many suppliers in its history where they become the vast majority of some vendors products then finds a cheaper source and leaves them screwed over from expansion costs with no place to sell their new manufacturing capacity.
Coincidentally, this is broadly similar to something I already mentioned elsewhere in this thread!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).