Kuo: Apple still working on 27-inch miniLED display for next year

Yesterday, reliable display analyst Ross Young said Apple had scrapped its plans to develop a 27-inch miniLED display with ProMotion. While the Cupertino firm shipped a few monitors last year, the analyst reported the company “killed off” the display “at least for now.”

That said, Ming-Chi Kuo, another reliable Apple analyst with multiple supply chain sources, contradicted Young’s report by saying the company is still planning to release a 27-inch display. According to Kuo, it’s slated for mass production in 2024 or early 2025, boasting “all the features one would expect from a high-end monitor.”

The analyst says this 27-inch display will utilize miniLED technology, and the most notable design change is to switch the material of the miniLED backplane from the PCB to glass. Kuo reports that the benefits of adopting a glass backplane include a thinner panel thickness, a narrower bezel, and an extended product lifespan.

Although he doesn’t mention ProMotion, Kuo states that it will have “all the features one would expect from a high-end monitor,” probably meaning that Apple is aiming to add a higher refresh rate to an external display for the first time

Will Apple release a 27-inch miniLED display or not?

Rumors about this 27-inch display with miniLED and ProMotion started in 2021. It was expected to launch by the summer of 2022, then pushed back for an October 2022 release. After this delay, Ross Young said Apple was planning to unveil this product in the first quarter of 2023, but the plans have been scrapped. Now, Kuo believes it could come to life in 2024 or 2025.

Interestingly enough, a few months ago, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman said Apple was working on the successor of the 2019 Pro Display XDR, but also several new external monitors:

Apple is working on multiple new external monitors as well, including an update to the Pro Display XDR that was launched alongside the Intel Mac Pro in 2019. 

According to him, those new monitors would include Apple silicon, which “helps the screens rely less on resources from the attached computer.”

That said, it’s unclear if Apple scrapped all these new monitors if the company is still working on a new iteration of the Pro Display XDR – as we are yet to see the upcoming Apple silicon Mac Pro – or if it will continue with the only two options by the company: the 2019 Pro Display XDR and the 2022 Studio Display.

BGR will report back once we learn more about Apple’s plans.