Apple has lined up a new supplier for its periscope telephoto lens that will be used in iPhone 15. The new supplier is Jahwa Electronics, which currently sells optical image stabilization (OIS) actuators to Samsung for the Galaxy S22 series of smartphones.
To help support its efforts towards supplying components to Apple, Jahwa will be spending 191 billion won to build new facilities. The spending will be done until March 2023, after which the company will start producing the components for Apple, as per The Elec.
iPhone 15 periscope telephoto lens OIS components to be supplied by Jahwa Electronics
Apple had visited Jahwa Electronics’ OIS production lines in South Korea in the first half of 2021 and has likely asked the company to create exclusive production lines for it. This is as per the norm from Apple, as it asks all its suppliers to build exclusive production lines to create components.
Once the new production lines go live in March in Gumi, South Korea, Jahwa Electronics could start supplying OIS actuators to Apple in the second quarter of 2023. These actuators will be used for telephoto lens, similar to how the company makes them for Samsung. Jahwa Electronics will continue to use its existing facilities in Cheongju, South Korea and Vietnam to supply OIS actuators to Samsung.
It has been widely speculated that Apple would debut its first periscope telephoto lens in its 2023 iPhone 15 models. Recently, analyst Jeff Pu from Haitong International Securities wrote in his note to investors that Apple will introduce a 5x periscope telephoto lens or 10x telephoto zoom lens in iPhone 15. Compared to the 30x periscope zoom lens in many competitors, this is on the lower side, however, things might change as we get more reports later this year.
The benefit of a periscope lens is that it improves optical zoom by using folded optics inside the smartphone’s body, which allows light to be folded after it hits the camera sensor. This enables improved optical zoom in a relatively small space. Android OEMs like Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi have been using periscope lens in their smartphone cameras for many years.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had also claimed back in December 2021 that Apple will feature periscope zoom lens in at least one iPhone 15 Pro model. It had earlier been rumored that the periscope zoom lens could launch in iPhone 14 models, but this changed with recent reports.
Later this year, Apple is expected to launch iPhone 14 with a punch-hole display, no notch, A16 Bionic chip, heavier titanium casing, in-display Face ID, and a 2TB variant. The smartphones are also expected to feature 48MP cameras and 8K video recording.
