The total cost of the Apple Watch’s plastic AMOLED...

The total cost of the Apple Watch’s plastic AMOLED display “is highly dependent on yield rates throughout the manufacturing and assembly process,” DisplaySearch said Wednesday in an emailed sales pitch for its Flexible Displays Technology and Market Forecast Report (http://bit.ly/1msRbgB). “Producing a high resolution AMOLED display alone is challenging,” the company said. “Add the processes for coating the flexible substrate on carrier glass, encapsulation, and laser-lift off and the module process becomes even more complicated.” Assuming a 60 percent yield rate, DisplaySearch estimates the Apple Watch’s display costs more than $27 on bill of materials terms, “depending on the costs of the module, touch panel interface, and cover lens.” For the Apple Watch, Apple is sourcing 1.3- and 1.5-inch AMOLEDs on plastic substrates from LG Display, a DisplaySearch blogger said last month, saying a big benefit of AMOLED on plastic is that it can be extremely thin, light and rugged (CED Aug 26 p6). DisplaySearch has estimated average yield rates above 60 percent would allow LG Display to produce more than 10 million AMOLED-on-plastic panels in 2014. Apple hasn’t given a precise release date on the Apple Watch, but has said it would debut the watch in early 2015 at $349 (CED Sept 10 p1).