Samsung and LG Win iPhone 18 Pro LTPO+ Panels; BOE Sits Out

Samsung Display is on track to ship roughly 146 million OLED panels to Apple this year. LG Display has been cleared for more than 82 million. Both volumes lean on a new backplane technology that BOE, the Chinese supplier Cupertino spent four years grooming for the premium tier, could not yield in time.

The shift moves the iPhone 18 Pro display order back into a two-supplier Korean lock, with BOE relegated to legacy and entry-level iPhones. Korean publication The Elec, which broke the allocation in early May, says Apple plans to sign off on final LTPO+ (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide Plus, an oxide-extended OLED backplane) panel approvals this month ahead of a September unveil.

Samsung and LG Reclaim the Pro Panel Order

Only the Pro and Pro Max in the iPhone 18 family carry the new LTPO+ panel, the step beyond the LTPO screens Apple has shipped on Pro-series phones since the iPhone 13 Pro launch in September 2021. Samsung Display sourced the majority of Apple’s Pro panel volume in that period; BOE clawed in for the iPhone 17 Pro after passing certification late last year.

That window closed faster than the Chinese supplier expected.

Allocation as currently reported:

• Samsung Display: roughly 146 million OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) panels across the iPhone 18 family, including the bulk of Pro and Pro Max units
• LG Display: more than 82 million units, including a meaningful share of the Pro and Pro Max
• BOE: approximately 35 million units, concentrated on iPhone 14, 15, 16e, 16, 17e, and 17, with the Pro 17 line alone accounting for about 8.2 million

Apple has scheduled its panel sign-offs for May, with mass-production ramps to follow in early summer for a September Pro launch. The cheaper iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e have been pushed to the spring of 2027, which means BOE’s premium shut-out also overlaps a quiet six-month stretch on the volume calendar; the budget models the Chinese supplier would have shipped at scale are not even in store yet.

How LTPO+ Rewires the OLED Backplane

LTPO+ is a backplane spec, not a panel surface. The visible glass and the OLED emission layer on top look the same. What changes is the layer of transistors underneath that decides which pixels light, how brightly, and when they update.

The shift has two ingredients in the transistor stack, both inherited from earlier OLED generations and then pushed further.

From LTPS to LTPO

LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon, the standard thin-film transistor layer behind AMOLED screens) is fast and drives current well, but it leaks power. A static screen on an LTPS panel still refreshes 60 to 120 times a second and burns battery for the privilege.

LTPO keeps LTPS for the high-speed current-driving transistors and swaps in IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, an oxide semiconductor) for the switching transistors. IGZO has near-zero off-state leakage, which is what lets the panel hold a frame at 1Hz without flicker or visible roll-off.

The Oxide Layer Goes Deeper

LTPO+ extends the oxide treatment further into the driving transistor itself. According to research from Seoul-based UBI Research, the upgrade enables finer control of how much current each subpixel receives, allowing the panel to optimise emission for the room and the content on screen.

The practical effect is more efficient pixel-level dimming and a wider variable refresh range, without the brownout artefacts current panels show in the 1Hz to 10Hz band.

The comparison stack:

That technical shift is also what locked BOE out. Producing oxide transistors with the uniformity needed for primary current control is harder than producing them for switching alone, and defect rates climb with every additional oxide layer in the stack.

BOE’s Setback and the Hedge Apple Keeps

BOE certified for iPhone 17 Pro panels late last year after years of yield work, and the win was treated in Beijing as a milestone in China’s catch-up race against Samsung Display and LG Display.

The new spec reset that race. The Chinese maker’s pilot lines could produce the upgraded panels, but not at the yield and uniformity Apple’s quality team demanded for a Pro tier shipping tens of millions of units in a single quarter.

Still, Apple has not blacklisted the supplier.

BOE remains the primary OLED source for iPhone 14, iPhone 15, iPhone 16e, iPhone 16, iPhone 17e, and the standard iPhone 17. The company targets roughly 35 million Apple display shipments in 2026, with about 8.2 million of those tied to the iPhone 17 Pro line carrying over.

Apple’s purchasing pattern across two decades of iPhone production shows the company keeps a third supplier in the room even when it cannot fill the top tier. The presence of a viable alternative is what gives Cupertino price leverage against the dominant vendor; Korean panel pricing for Pro models has historically eased when BOE has been able to take incremental volume. The same hedging instinct shows up elsewhere in the supply bench, including Apple’s preliminary chip deal with Intel for iPhone and Mac silicon.

That backup role is what BOE will play through the iPhone 18 cycle. The cost advantage matters because the budget iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e, both pushed to spring 2027, will land into a price-sensitive band where Apple will lean on the Chinese supplier rather than the Koreans. The dynamic runs the other way too; Samsung’s own talks with BOE for the base Galaxy S27 display show even BOE’s South Korean rivals turn to the Chinese supplier when entry-level pricing matters.

Under-Display Face ID and a Shrinking Cutout

The reason the new backplane requirement was severe enough to drop BOE goes beyond power efficiency.

Reports from The Elec and ETNews indicate the iPhone 18 Pro panel specification includes a region of the backplane engineered to host an infrared sensor beneath the OLED layer. Apple needs the screen to pass enough infrared light through to the sensor for the dot-projector array Face ID uses, without compromising visible-light brightness or uniformity above it.

That hybrid region is what would reduce the size of the Dynamic Island cutout. Apple has carried a notch or pill on every iPhone since the iPhone X launched in 2017, so the iPhone 18 Pro would be the first to shrink the cutout substantially, with most Face ID components moving under the screen and only the front camera remaining in a smaller pinhole.

The under-display infrared work is a Samsung Display speciality deployed earlier on Galaxy Z Fold internal-camera modules, and Korean industry sources say the firm is the only LTPO+ partner already producing yield-passable infrared-window panels. LG Display is reportedly developing its own version of the technology but lags by roughly six months, which is why its share of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max volume sits below Samsung’s even within the two-supplier Korean lock.

The Battery Question the Spec Sheet Will Not Answer

The selling point Apple typically attaches to a display upgrade is battery life, but the gain from a backplane transition is hard to isolate from everything else changing on the phone.

The numbers in play:

• About one hour: the video-runtime gain LTPO added to the iPhone 13 Pro over the iPhone 12 Pro, per Apple’s own spec sheet
• 2nm: the process node of the A20 Pro chip headed for the iPhone 18 Pro, the more obvious efficiency lever
• 1Hz to 120Hz: the variable-refresh range LTPO unlocked, retained in the new generation with finer steps
• ~228 million: the combined LTPO+ panel volume Samsung Display and LG Display are slated to produce this year

The display layer is rarely the headline efficiency story even when it changes substantially. Apple typically routes display-driver gains into a thinner phone rather than into a longer runtime number on the box, and the consensus design renders for the iPhone 18 Pro already show a thinner profile.

On-device AI workloads have been rising on every iPhone generation since the iPhone 16 introduced Apple Intelligence, and a more efficient backplane buys back some of the power those models consume. Neither analysts nor supply-chain reporters have yet given a verifiable percentage gain for the new panels alone.

A realistic forecast is one to two extra hours of advertised video playback over the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s current claim. Whether buyers feel that gain depends on how aggressively Apple’s AI features draw from the same battery pool.

September Hinges on May’s Panel Approvals

Apple is expected to sign off on Samsung Display’s and LG Display’s tooling this month, with mass production starting in early summer. The Pro and Pro Max would then move into final assembly through July and August before the fall reveal, slotted for the company’s usual September window.

What does not move in that window is the volume model. The standard iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e are now scheduled for spring 2027, the first time since the iPhone SE second generation in 2020 that Apple has decoupled its Pro and non-Pro launches by two quarters. The foldable iPhone is the wild card; reports place it alongside the iPhone 18 Pro in September, but supply-chain notes from earlier this month flag December as a fallback if Samsung’s foldable OLED ramp slips.

If the May approvals close cleanly, Apple ships a Pro line on the new backplane with a shrunken Dynamic Island, a 2nm chip, and a variable-aperture main camera. If the approvals slip into June, the Pro launch holds and the foldable absorbs the delay.

Apple’s panel approvals for the two Korean suppliers are due by the end of May at a combined volume of 228 million units. The September Pro launch falls or holds on that signoff.