Sapphire is black: expensive and not environmentally friendly

The day before, Corelle executives in a conference call is highly critical of the sapphire glass "expensive and heavy and not environmental protection" and other issues, said that if the sapphire glass attractive that Corelle started production, also claimed that Corelle's Gorilla glass sapphire glass than compressive ability 2.5 times.

Apple's flagship mobile phone iPhone5S uses a sapphire glass as a protective material rear camera and TouchID Home fingerprint identification key, but there are also rumors that apple is likely to adopt sapphire glass screen in the future iPhone and iWatch products.

Since iPhone5 and iPhone5S are using Corelle gorilla glass screen, so the industry will inevitably be concerned about the impact of Apple's sapphire glass screen will be the impact on Corelle's business. In the "Morgan Stanley technology, media and Telecommunications Conference, Corelle senior vice president Toni - Terry Penny (TonyTripeny) in the face of sapphire glass and gorilla glass on issues raised by analysts, successfully changed the subject to the defect on the sapphire glass.

He said: "compared with the exception of gorilla glass, we found that there are a lot of disadvantages: expensive sapphire glass about 10 times the weight of 1.6 times, and the energy consumption is not environmental protection -- the production of a sapphire glass is about 100 times higher than that of the glass. It (sapphire glass) light transmittance is lower, that is to say it will either make the device screen dimmed, or shorten battery life. "

Terry admitted that the penny sapphire glass indeed scratch resistant ability is very strong, but also pointed out that it will burst, and stressed that the gorilla glass in the test pressure can withstand 2.5 times higher than the sapphire glass. He believes that sapphire glass for consumer electronics equipment is not attractive.

Asked why the high cost of sapphire glass and whether it is possible to reduce costs through increased production, Terry Payne lists three problems: the production of sapphire glass crystallization time length is about 4000 times than the Corelle glass, melting point is much higher than in the latter; high hardness and inherent greatly increase the difficulty and cost cutting; as the size increases, the formation of flawless crystallization difficulty exponentially increase.

Penny Terry said: "if this is an attractive business, so we must first begin to do. "In the end, he said one of the great advantages of sapphire glass is" Sapphire "the most attractive name.

However, apple is clearly on the sapphire glass high hopes -- we have seen several items on the sapphire glass production, processing and installation technology of the patent application for the apple, apple and sapphire glass manufacturer GTAdvancedTechnology reached a value of $578 million cooperation agreement.

Terry Payne said, Corelle long ago through direct and indirect way to participate in the gem industry. If the industry is indeed profitable, they have increased investment, he also revealed that the sapphire shaping time is 4000 times the gorilla glass, the need for higher melting temperature. Due to the hardness is too high, both the processing difficulty or processing costs will increase significantly. In addition, the production process problems will also reduce the yield of sapphire products, thus pushing up the cost of processing.