KGI's Ming-Chi Kuo: Apple has 6.5" OLED, 6.1" LCD, and 5.8" OLED iPhones slated for late 2018 launch, all following the iPhone X form factor
Apple has three new iPhone models in the pipeline for a late 2018 launch, two of which will be the company's biggest handsets ever …
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after the iPhone X shipped, Ming-Chi Kuo's supply-chain note at KGI sketches how Apple intends to industrialize its new design: rather than keeping the notch-and-edge-to-edge look as a single premium model, Apple would spread it across three sizes — a 5.8" OLED successor, a larger 6.5" OLED, and a cheaper 6.1" LCD variant — for late 2018. A follow-up KGI report added that all three would carry bigger batteries, with the two OLED models using an L-shaped battery design to fill the freed-up internal space.
The significance is that this was the first credible signal of Apple moving to a three-tier annual lineup built around one shared form factor — a structure Kuo's later notes show persisting, from the three-iPhone 2020 plan with 5G on the high-end pair to the four-model 2022 lineup concentrated at 6.1" and 6.7".
First-order effects
- Buyers get the iPhone X design language at a lower entry price through the 6.1" LCD model, while the 6.5" OLED gives Apple its biggest handset ever — directly targeting the large-phone segment where Android makers had been unopposed.
- Apple's display sourcing splits into two tracks for one product family: OLED panels for the 5.8" and 6.5" models alongside lower-resolution LCD for the volume tier, changing the mix of panel orders across its supplier base.
Second-order effects
- Android flagship makers lose their screen-size differentiation advantage once Apple fields 6.5" hardware, forcing them to compete on features and price rather than display real estate.
- Component suppliers gain a second high-volume OLED customer ramp inside Apple's own lineup, while LCD capacity shifts toward serving only the budget tier of the iPhone family.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — as Kuo's subsequent 2020 and 2022 lineup reports suggest it did — Apple's annual cadence settles into a fixed multi-size, multi-price architecture where each generation reuses one form factor across tiers, making the fall iPhone event a portfolio refresh rather than a single-product launch.
- That consolidation pushes panel and battery innovation (L-shaped cells, higher-resolution OLED) to be driven by Apple's tier structure, with suppliers designing parts to span multiple models instead of one flagship.
The trend: Apple's iPhone releases are consolidating into a recurring three-plus-size lineup sharing a single form factor, with Kuo's supply-chain notes tracking that structure year after year.