It’s arduous to argue that 2024 hasn’t already been an eventful yr for Apple. The Imaginative and prescient Professional got here out in February, taking the world — or not less than the US — by storm. We additionally noticed a brand new M3 MacBook Air lineup, and there’s each cause to consider some thrilling new iPad updates are simply across the nook.
Sadly, although, it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses for the corporate, because it’s additionally confronted just a few setbacks. The truth is, 2024 is shaping as much as be one in every of Apple’s most difficult years in current reminiscence, as the corporate faces vital authorized challenges from European and US antitrust regulators on one facet and a pair of Apple Watch patent battles from left discipline which have left the way forward for Apple’s well being monitoring expertise in flux.
It’s additionally the yr when Apple’s executives appear to be re-evaluating the corporate’s roadmap for a few of its longer-term “moonshot” initiatives. Late final month, we heard the surprising information that the Apple Automotive had been unceremoniously canceled, placing an finish to almost ten years of rumors and hypothesis about Apple’s automotive ambitions. There are additionally causes to consider Apple has deserted its makes an attempt to develop its personal 5G modem chip and scaled again plans for its much-rumored AR glasses right into a extra primary pair of good glasses.
Now it seems like Apple can also be giving up on one other of its longstanding ambitions: constructing microLED shows for the Apple Watch.
Rumors of Apple’s work on microLED expertise have been swirling for not less than seven years now. A 2017 report on Apple’s patents on the tech was adopted by the revelation of a secret facility the place microLED shows have been being developed, and it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Apple’s provide chain started speculating that it might quickly be coming to an Apple Watch.
Following a 2020 report that microLED wasn’t coming to the Apple Watch Sequence 6, issues bought very quiet till early final yr when a report that Apple was growing the expertise for the Apple Watch Extremely stoked the fires as soon as once more. These continued all through 2023, estimating that the brand new show tech would make an look on Apple’s premium wearable by 2026.
Nevertheless, indicators of the challenge’s demise appeared earlier this month when Apple reportedly canceled its major provider for the shows. Some of us, together with analysts Ming-Chi Kuo and Ross Younger, believed this marked the tip of the initiative.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman pointedly disagreed with their conclusions, sustaining in a since-deleted tweet that Apple nonetheless had different suppliers lined up and including, “I doubt it was canceled.”
Since then, Gurman appears to have acquired new info that’s modified his tune. In a report in the present day at Bloomberg, he confirms that Apple is certainly “winding down” its long-running smartwatch show challenge, “placing an finish to a different expensive analysis and improvement initiative.”
In current weeks, the corporate has ceased an in-house effort to create screens with microLED expertise, in accordance with individuals with data of the matter. The shows, which featured brighter and extra vibrant visuals, would have been added to a future model of the Apple Watch — earlier than probably going into different merchandise.
Mark Gurman
Kuo and Younger get their info from Apple’s Asian provide chain, whereas Gurman is believed to have sources inside Apple Park. Whereas provide chain companions can solely report what they’ve been advised, Apple workers normally have a greater pulse on the corporate’s plans. Nevertheless, they’re not all the time advised every little thing, both.
On this case, it appears the oldsters within the provide chain who have been advised the initiatives have been canceled bought it proper. Maybe the choice hadn’t been finalized throughout the partitions of Apple Park, or perhaps it hadn’t trickled down from the higher echelons, however Gurman will need to have had not less than one supply who believed Apple’s microLED ambitions have been nonetheless alive.
Whereas it’s arguably not as vital of an enterprise because the Apple Automotive, it seems the microLED show staff will probably be becoming a member of the oldsters from Mission Titan in being reassigned or laid off as Apple reorganizes issues internally.
Gurman provides that the choice additionally got here across the identical time that Apple executives scrapped the Apple Automotive challenge, suggesting it’s a part of a broader effort to seek out methods to run leaner and refocus its analysis and improvement priorities on issues which can be extra in demand and can repay within the quick time period, equivalent to generative AI.
Whereas Apple’s microLED plans is probably not solely lifeless, they’ve been placed on the shelf, alongside Apple Glasses, till the extent of expertise catches as much as Apple’s ambitions. For now, Gurman says, Apple believes the OLED is sweet sufficient, and whereas it’s nonetheless eyeing new processes that would make the expertise viable, it’s not coming anytime quickly.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]