GTAT to Supply Sapphire Material for More Than 30 Million iPhones Yearly

The company from Cupertino has recently signed a deal with GT Advanced Technologies - an American sapphire material manufacturer that is expected to supply Apple with components for iPhone and iPad. Some sources even claim that sapphire will be used in production of the long-expected iWatch, however, these rumors are still unconfirmed.

According to the latest Digitimes report,

US-based crystal growth solution and equipment provider GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) has announced that Apple will pre-pay US$578 million to secure sapphire supply. GTAT will be able to use the funds to set up additional sapphire production capacity which will produce enough sapphire to make 5-inch screen covers for 33.79-50.56 million iPhones a year, Digitimes Research estimated.

As it was mentioned before, a sapphire manufacturing facility will be opened in Mesa, Arizona by the year 2015.