Apple was working on a version of the Apple Watch Ultra with a microLED display, but work on the project has been canceled for now. Apple no longer plans to develop microLED display technology in-house, and plans for a microLED Apple Watch have been nixed or indefinitely delayed.
This guide highlights the rumors that we heard about the microLED Apple Watch.
MicroLED Apple Watch Ultra
Introduced in 2022, the current Apple Watch Ultra uses standard OLED technology. MicroLED is, as the name suggests, LED display technology rather than OLED display technology, but it offers many of the benefits of OLED along with some improvements. The microLED Apple Watch was rumored to include a 2.1-inch diagonal display.
MicroLED displays are brighter and have more vibrant colors and rumors suggested the display would a look like content is "painted on top of the glass."
MicroLED Overview
MicroLED is a new technology that's been around for about two decades, but it has not yet been mass produced, because of the costs associated with it and the difficulty of making the displays. Samsung, for example, has made a microLED TV, but it sells for $150,000.
As the name suggests, microLED uses microscopic LEDs for individual pixels. The production process involves creating little tiny LEDs on a wafer and transferring them to a backplane, a process that hasn't been perfected yet because of the time that it takes to test all of those LEDs. Since this is nascent technology, there are new cutting-edge production techniques in the works, and multiple companies are focused on figuring out microLED.
Compared to LED displays, microLED is much more energy efficient and it would likely notably increase battery life on the Apple Watch Ultra and other devices that adopt the technology in the future. Unlike OLED, there's much less risk of screen burn-in, and microLEDs have a longer potential lifetime.
MicroLED displays also provide contrast improvements and faster response times because of the pixel-level individual lights, plus the color is better and brighter. In a nutshell, it's a next-generation technology superior to OLED and miniLED. Like OLED displays, microLED displays can be flexible, so if Apple eventually transitions to foldable devices, those products could use microLED. The technology would also work for curved displays.
Apple's In-House Display Development
MicroLED is not like Apple's other display technologies because it was the first display type that Apple was planning to design in-house. Rather than using a third-party display supplier like Samsung or LG Display, Apple aimed to design the displays itself and have them manufactured by partners like TSMC.
Apple spent over six years working on microLED technology, and it invested billions into developing new displays. Way back in 2015, Apple opened a secret laboratory in northern Taiwan to work on thinner, brighter, and more energy-efficient displays for future iOS devices, and rumors suggested the factory was dedicated to microLED. In 2023 Bloomberg called microLED one of the company's most "critical projects," but it was scrapped because it was not too expensive and complicated.
Apple in February ended a relationship with ams OSRAM a company that was going to supply it with microLED panels for the Apple Watch Ultra, and Apple also stopped working with a manufacturing company contracted to develop components for the device in March. News of the full cancelation of the project followed.
Apple reportedly had than 300 employees working on microLED display development. Those employees will be relocated to other departments, able to apply for new jobs within Apple, or laid off and provided with severance.
MicroLED Launch Date
There is no current plan to release a microLED Apple Watch. That could change in the future as Apple is said to be "eyeing" potential uses for other products, and "identifying" new suppliers and manufacturing processes.
