Apple recently announced its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to foster US innovation and with investment of up to $1 billion. Corning has been given $200 million from this to support R&D and capital equipment needs for its glass processing. Apple has been using Corning glass since the first iPhone 10 years ago, and it is estimated that almost 1,000 US jobs have been created since the adoption of Gorilla glass in 2007.
Analyst Comment
Gorilla Glass from Corning has been an important material for the development of the smartphone market. As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, if there was to be some kind of development of flat panel display manufacture in the US, especially based on LCD, then a supply of glass might be a significant enabling factor. However, further improvement in Gorilla Glass might also be attractive to Apple, which invested heavily in GT Advanced Technologies Inc, a developer of sapphire-based materials without a good outcome, before that company went into bankruptcy in 2014.
It seems most likely that this investment is related to smaller displays, but it’s possible that it also applies to larger substrates. (BR)
