San Francisco, Aug 12 Apple is reportedly planning to use a micro-LED display instead of an OLED panel in its future Apple Watch.
Apple could be using the MicroLED Display panel for the seventh-generation Apple Watch.
However, the upcoming Apple Watch, the sixth-generation model, will continue to have an OLED panel, reports DigiTimes.
Apple is investing around $330 million in the Taiwan-based company for a micro-LED factory that will manufacture displays for future iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and other devices from Apple.
According to the report, Lee Biing-jye, chairman of Epistar which is the largest LED manufacturer in Taiwan, said that smartwatches will become the first major applications of Micro-LED. But the time for mass adoption may be 3-4 years.
A watch's 300 x 300 pixels would require around 300,000 micro LEDs, he was quoted as saying.
Micro LED has the double advantage of offering less power consumption than the current Apple Watch screens, and of being thinner, too.
The main barrier to adoption is the micro-LED manufacturing process, which is complicated - glass substrates are used which need a lot of testing.
( With inputs from IANS )