Technically, it’s Samsung Display, a Samsung subsidiary that makes OLED displays, not Samsung Mobile, the company that makes flagship Android phones like the Galaxy S26 series. Additionally, LG Display and BOE are the other two suppliers of OLED panels for the iPhone. However, the latter has experienced quality issues that have prevented it from winning more orders.
Apple’s strategy of ordering parts from one of its biggest competitors may seem surprising, but it’s simply how the company works. Apple designs the iPhone in California, but the company doesn’t use commercially available parts from suppliers. It orders custom components at a scale that gives it leverage with component manufacturers. Apple regularly sells more than 200 million iPhones per year, making it a highly coveted business for companies such as Samsung Display.
Because Apple aims to deliver a premium iPhone experience, the company will pay for more expensive components, including the latest generation of OLED technology from Samsung Display. This is why iPhone flagships may feature a new generation of OLED panels compared to Samsung Mobile’s Galaxy S models from the same year.
Apple’s long history with Samsung displays
The first iPhone to use an OLED panel was the tenth-anniversary model released in 2017. Samsung Display manufactured the flexible OLED panels Apple needed for this iPhone model, with Apple calling the panel “the first OLED display to meet iPhone standards.” This implied that earlier OLED panels, or those available on Android devices, were not sufficient to meet Apple’s needs. Apple also hinted that the OLED experience had been customized for the iPhone.
Apple needed three more years to integrate OLED panels into every model in a single iPhone line, with all four iPhone 12 models featuring OLED displays. At that time, LG Display and BOE had also started manufacturing OLED displays that met Apple’s requirements. Apple continued this supply diversification strategy to increase overall OLED panel manufacturing, enabling it to equip more devices with OLED displays and reduce component prices—an OLED panel for iPhone. The iPhone 13 series introduced LTPO OLED panels capable of supporting the ProMotion refresh rate (120Hz), but only the Pro models offered this feature. A year later, the iPhone 14 Pro models introduced support for the always-on feature.
OLED technology continued to mature over the next few years, with the iPhone 17 series being the first iPhone family to feature ProMotion and always-on displays across the board.
The best display in the industry
Display testing over the years has shown that the newest iPhones have the best possible OLED displays, thanks to both Samsung’s experience in making high-end OLED panels for mobile devices and Apple’s software customizations, which include color management, factory calibration, and burn-in prevention tools. Reviews of Galaxy S displays released after the latest iPhones have also highlighted the high-end features of OLED panels, in a seemingly endless cat-and-mouse game over the best smartphone displays. But in some years, like 2024, when Apple launched the iPhone 16 series, Apple used Samsung Display’s latest OLED material (M14 set on the Pros), while the Galaxy S24 Ultra featured the older M13 set. Last year, the iPhone 17 used M14 material across the board. The Galaxy S25 Ultra, released in 2025, remained on the M13 plateau, with Samsung Mobile only adopting the M14 material with the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Samsung has a direct incentive for Samsung Display to sell as many expensive OLED panels as possible to Apple, although it may seem counterintuitive: profits. Orders for Apple’s OLED panels total tens of millions of units. For example, UBI Research estimates that last year Samsung Display supplied around 57 million OLED panels, out of the initial 89 million units produced for the iPhone 17 series. LG Display supplied 30 million, while BOE reached only 1.3 million. Second, Apple is also a customer of OLED panels for other devices. Samsung Display has supplied some of the Tandem OLED displays for the iPad Pro M4 and iPad Pro M5 released in recent years. The Korean company is also expected to be the exclusive foldable display provider for the iPhone Fold this year, a device that is expected to feature a nearly crease-free display.
