Ondrej Holzman Apple will have to find a new sapphire supplier. With GT Advanced Technologies, which at the beginning of October she declared bankruptcy and requested protection from creditors, because he agreed to terminate the cooperation. GT Advanced will pay off its debt to Apple by selling ovens.
According to the server Street Insider with both sides they agreed on an "amicable parting". According to GT Advanced's lawyers, the agreement should save millions of dollars and solve most of the problems caused by the company's financial collapse. Unlike previous contracts between Apple and the sapphire manufacturer, the current agreement should be made public with almost no redactions.
According to Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Fortune however, it is in the agreement included a condition that documents that Apple did not want to be made public would not be released. This is apparently one of the reasons why Apple agreed to an agreement to end cooperation with GT Advanced, which can now close the factory in Mesa, Arizona.
GT Advanced currently owes Apple $439 million, which the Californian company has been gradually paying to upgrade its sapphire factory. Originally, it was supposed to send over 500 million dollars, but GT Advanced is for the last installment did not qualify and subsequently had to close the entire factory. The debt will be the company repay by selling 2 ovens, he will then send the money received to Apple.
The sudden end of the GT Advanced was taken aback even Apple, which will now have to find a new backyard supplier of sapphire, which it uses to protect the camera and Touch ID on iPhones and also for the displays in the Apple Watch. The question is whether it will once again resort to a single supplier or diversify its production chain.
Steve would buy them and be taken care of :-)
I think not. It was he who freed Apple from its own factories and asserted that everything would be produced externally. Rather, he would order production from several suppliers and not rely on just one.