OLED MacBook Air too expensive to make and may be delayed as Apple can't shake Samsung as display supplier
Apple may be throwing in the towel on the MacBook Air with OLED display for now, as its panel has proved too costly, while diversifying suppliers to make it cheaper is turning out to be harder than it expected.
According to Korean media, Samsung will be the sole supplier of tandem OLED displays for a MacBook Pro that will be released in 2026, but it may have to be the exclusive manufacturer of OLED screens for the MacBook Air, too, giving it too much pricing power.
Apple uses dual-stack tandem OLED technology by LG and Samsung on the iPad Pro (2024) for the first time, increasing the peak brightness and doubling the display lifespan compared with the conventional single-stack OLEDs that it uses in its iPhones.
For the OLED MacBook Pro, Apple plans to use long-life tandem OLED displays again, as people keep their laptops for longer periods of time. LG pioneered tandem OLEDs, but is at capacity with the iPad Pro panel production, while by 2026 Samsung will reportedly be ready to be the exclusive dual-stack OLED screen supplier for the MacBook Pro.
Despite that Apple intends to use a single-stack OLED for the MacBook Air that was supposed to see the light of day after the OLED MacBook Pro, it still considers such a panel too expensive to be placed in its cheapest laptop.
The MacBook Air starts from just $999 on Amazon, while the MacBook Pro is $1,599 for the base model, so Apple will wait and see if its Korean suppliers can drop the single-stack panel prices before it equips all of its laptops with OLED screens, reports local media.
This may push the OLED MacBook Air launch past the rumored 2027 release date, and Apple will simply keep using LCDs for the Air until it deems big single-stack OLED screens cost-competitive enough to keep its margins intact.
The delay is also conditioned on the limited sales success of its first iPad Pro with OLED display, whose shipments currently sit well below the 10 million units target, indicating that Apple's fans don't consider the OLED technology something worth paying extra for, dual-stack or not.
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