Since market rumors that Apple will start the production of sapphire light guide substrate, what is most curious about Apple is what products will be imported into sapphire. In fact, as early as Apple's big move, the overall sapphire substrate market was driven by the demand of LED lighting applications and handheld devices, making sapphire substrate manufacturers have already actively expanded. When Apple launched sapphire substrate factory in Arizona and began producing important components, the market trend of sapphire substrate was also more concerned.
It is understood that the warm LED terminal lighting market demand, especially for driving the development of LED, MR16, LED bulb lamp, including Seoul semiconductor (Seoul Viosys), the main LED chip manufacturer Taiwan EPISTAR and Chinese Sanan optoelectronics, HC semitek, in addition to the expansion speed, and continue to enhance the machine MOCVD to produce 4 inch, 4 inch sapphire substrate by proportion in 2013 was 40%, 2014 is expected to reach 43%.
In the non LED market demand, and the handheld application device needs to provide a larger thrust, in addition to the Apple sapphire material into the iPhone camera lens protection, as well as Home applications such as Button, LG will also protect the lens into the sapphire camera LG G2 mobile phone, this trend will drive the related mobile phone industry use up. LEDinside forecasts that the proportion of non LED market applications will reach 36% in 2014, of which the demand for handheld applications is more than 31%.
To observe the short-term market performance, due to the increased demand for LED backlight and other factors, the recent global patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) shortage situation, the industry generally believe that this wave of unrest will spread to the upstream sapphire crystal rod end