GT Advanced Technologies is apparently getting out of the sapphire production game, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the start of this week.
As reported by Re/code and the Wall Street Journal, the beleaguered company is asking the court’s permission to “wind down” operations at its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona — and, yes, for those keep track, that does come less than one year after the company first announced its game-changing deal with Apple.
How GT Advanced Technologies could have filed for bankruptcy, despite Apple’s best efforts to prop it up, is still something of a mystery — and it’ll stay like that if the company gets its way.
According to a Reuters report, GT Advanced has requested that the New Hampshire bankruptcy court currently overseeing its case put the kibosh on releasing key documents related to a “third party,” claiming that this would allow it avoid paying damages thanks to confidentiality agreements.
Apple’s plan to put sapphire glass in everything took a tumble this week when its exclusive supplier GT Advanced Technologies filed for bankruptcy, and according to Apple’s spokesman, they were just as shocked as all of us.
In a statement issued this morning to Reuters, the Apple spokesman Chris Gaither said the company was ‘surprised’ by GT’s decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but they haven’t given up on its AZ plant yet.
New details have emerged about the surprise bankruptcy protection filing of GT Advanced Technologies, a.k.a. the company that was supplying Apple with its sapphire.
As per the Wall Street Journal, Apple agreed to lend GT Advanced a total of $578 million to help get its large sapphire factory in Arizona up and running, only for Cupertino to withhold the final $139 million payment it was due to make, for reasons which aren’t yet clear, but likely relate to the company’s failure to deliver sapphire to Apple’s satisfaction.
The idea that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus would have a sapphire display was one of the most widely reported errors leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s next gen iPhones.
But while plenty of time was spent discussing the possibility, very few people made any money through the speculation — except for Tom Gutierrez, CEO of sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies, which just filed for bankruptcy protection.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one day before Apple revealed its new iPhones wouldn’t feature sapphire screens after all, the boss of the struggling company cashed in more than 9,000 shares of GT stock for an average price of $17.38 — bringing in a total of $160,000.
Since February this year, Gutierrez has sold close to 700,000 shares in his company, valued at more than $10 million.
GT Advanced Technologies, a sapphire supplier that works closely with Apple, today confirmed that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. Its share price has been falling since it was revealed that Apple opted for Gorilla Glass rather than sapphire for its iPhone 6 displays, but GT insists it’s not going out of business.
Aside from the fact that it features a “flexible Retina display” and is capable of “reading” both soft and hard presses, Apple hasn’t let much out of the bag about the sapphire display for its eagerly-anticipated Apple Watch.
A new report from research firm NPD DisplaySearch has a bit more to say, however — including the price Apple is apparently paying for the sapphire laminate panels it’s using for its wearables debut.
One of the biggest disappointments from Apple’s announcements yesterday was the lack of a sapphire screen for the iPhone 6. A seemingly-neverending string of part leaks and rumors indicated that 2014 would be the year the iPhone got a nearly indestructible sapphire display cover.
And while sapphire is used for the Apple Watch’s display, Apple made no mention of sapphire for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
What happened?
According to a new report from Digitimes, U.S.-based GT Advanced Technologies will be supplying sapphire screens for the eagerly anticipated 5.5-inch iPhone 6.
Based on Digitimes’ research, GTAT has 2,500 crystal-growing furnaces and mature crystal-growing processes that would allow them to produce enough sapphire to produce 45 million 5.5-inch covers in 2015. Cost-wise these are likely to come in at around $30, which Digitimes suggests will be a competitive price for a 5.5-inch sapphire cover in 2015.
Whether or not the upcoming iPhone 6 will sport a sapphire crystal display or not is something we’ll have to wait to find out for sure, but the ultra-strong material used by many high end watch manufacturers is certainly something Apple has spent a lot of time investigating.
Some of those investigations have led to a new patent application published today, revealing how Apple plans a technique for strengthening glass by using an “ion implanting” method as opposed to the kind of chemical coatings used for, say, Corning’s Gorilla Glass.
According to the application, the reason for this is that the kind of traditional chemical strengthening techniques used on glass screens might not be effective when used on materials like sapphire.
