The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c are barely out of the gate, but we may already know one feature of next year's iPhone 6: a super-hard sapphire glass display.
Apple has struck a deal with a US supplier for sapphire glass, which will be produced at a plant in Arizona for future iPhone and iPad devices.
According to USA Today, GT Advanced Technologies will make the super-hard glass for Apple products, employing around 700 people at a currently-vacant factory in east Mesa, Arizona.
The deal was announced by GT Advanced Technologies in a regulatory filing on Monday afternoon. "The sapphire glass that GT will make in the facility will be used to cover the camera lenses in Apple's phones and the fingerprint-reading devices in its latest products. GT's technology also can be used to make scratchproof glass covers for smartphones, although it is not used for that purpose by Apple today".
Apple will put up $578m, which GT Advanced Technologies will use to buy and operate sapphire production equipment in a new Arizona facility. GT Advanced Technologies will pay back the Apple over a five-year period.
"We believe that it is in the long-term best interests of our company, employees and shareholders to build a robust sapphire materials business with recurring revenues," said Tom Gutierrez, CEO of GT Advanced Technologies. "By leveraging the new materials operation and our enhanced R&D efforts, we will be well positioned to drive the growth of other sapphire opportunities."
While the deal should, in the short-term, provide Apple with the materials it needs for existing components, there's a long-term plan, too. As part of the deal, GT Advanced Technologies will "deliver low cost, high volume manufacturing of sapphire material" using a large-capacity furnace.
That has got the rumour mill turning, suggesting that Apple is looking to use sapphire glass on its products, possible starting with the iPhone 6.
Synthetic sapphire glass gets its name because its transparent, rather than technically being glass. The advantage that sapphire has over traditional glass is its hardiness and extreme scratch resistance: sapphire has a value of 9 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, putting it just behind diamond. A hardier material would result in fewer broken iPhones and iPads, saving money in repair costs.
Currently, sapphire is expensive to produce, particularly in the sizes required for screens. However, with Apple's investment and GT Advanced Technologies' large-scale forges, large sapphire glass may not be too far off.
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