Does Gorilla Glass 4 Give Reason To Move Away From Sapphire?
The new Corning Gorilla Glass 4 could make manufacturers think twice about investing in sapphire.
Corning Gorilla Glass is a widely used product in the displays of major phone manufacturers. Displays in the Samsung Galaxy Line, the iPhone 6 and other leading devices on the market are made of Gorilla Glass 3, but Corning said Thursday it was coming out with the fourth generation of the product.
The company said Gorilla Glass 4 is twice as tough as its predecessor. Companies such as Apple have been rumored to be working on displays made of sapphire, but with Gorilla Glass 4 said to be the most durable version of the product line to date, it may give vendors less incentive to move to another solution.
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"There have been a lot of rumors about sapphire … but I think that is unlikely to happen anytime soon," said Michael Oh, CEO of Tech Superpowers, an Apple partner based in Boston. "I think at least for the time being, there is still room for innovation for more traditional displays such as Gorilla Glass. Dealing with sapphire material in large mass production hasn’t been concurred yet. Cracking that type of manufacturing seems pretty unlikely by Apple in the near future."
According to GT Advanced Technologies, a Merrimack, N.H.-based technology company that produces sapphire materials, among other advanced materials, said that Apple had planned to use sapphire displays with the iPhone 6, but opted to go with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 instead.
Corning said Gorilla Glass is used by more than 40 manufacturers for in excess of 1,300 of their products.
"It comes down to the cost," said Oh. "Corning is a leader in the field and if [Gorilla Glass 4] really is that durable, it becomes a balance between cost and durability. At a certain point where something is durable enough and it serves a need of 99 percent of the customers, even if you spent 20 percent more to appease that remaining 1 percent of customers, you really aren’t gaining much. By releasing these versions, Apple, Samsung and others will take the easy path."
Corning said it examined hundreds of broken devices and found that a large majority were damaged by falls on sharp edges. It said Gorilla Glass 4 is more durable for that kind of impact while still keeping the thinness of the product.
With Corning's new innovation of its product line, Tech Superpowers' Oh sees tablets and smartphones avoiding sapphire for now, but someday that will change.
"It'll be interesting to see how it's used and if sapphire will be used," he said. "The two should meet at some point. Within watches it's been used for a long time, but it's obviously a smaller quantity. I think sapphire has a fashion implication as well. In terms of the Apple Watch, my guess is that Apple is entering into a fashion realm, so sapphire will be what it's made of."
PUBLISHED NOV. 20, 2014