GT Advanced Technologies Inc fka GTAT

[jay1000]

[WSJ]- The Real Story Behind GTAT’s Flawed Sapphire Boules - FWIW
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Real-Story-Behind-GTAT-s-Flawed-Sapphire-Boules-WSJ-465466.shtml

A new report from the Wall Street Journal cites a letter from Apple to GT Advanced’s creditors revealing that the main problem behind the duo’s failed partnership was, in fact, the lack of experienced personnel and poor management.
About a year ago, Apple and GTAT entered into an agreement where the former would foot some bills and the latter would churn out some sapphire boules.

Nature takes millions of years to produce the exotic material, but humans have invented a technology that can replicate the process in a lab. And in a greatly reduced time frame. It still takes a while to make the heavy sapphire cylinders, also known as “boules,” but at least we’re no longer at the mercy of Mother Nature.

GTAT promised to supply good quality boules to Apple in a timely fashion with good yield rates. The sapphire was for the next-generation iPhone’s display, but things happened and GTAT was unable to deliver. The two companies ended up embroiled in a lawsuit.

The media looked at the case from every angle, and most reports favored GTAT because it had been said that Apple was to blame for putting too much strain on the sapphire maker. These reports sounded credible because Apple has been, for most of its existence, a control freak. However, that’s no longer the case under Tim Cook’s tenure, and it certainly wasn’t the case of Apple and GTAT, as the WSJ now reveals.
Apple’s side, this time on a more serious note
The iPhone makers in Cupertino, California, put blame “squarely at the feet of GTAT’s own management,” according to a letter to GT’s creditors intercepted by the WSJ. The story goes like this:

GT had no experience with mass production. The company’s first 578-pound sapphire boule proved to be “flawed and unusable.” Some of the people hired to operate the furnaces were “paid overtime to sweep floors repeatedly, while others played hooky.” Apple tells the WSJ, “‘We never wavered from our commitment to make the project successful.’”
Doesn’t sound too far-fetched, does it?
It’s certainly more believable than any argument put forth by GTAT so far, not to mention that the company’s boss retracted some of his statements when he was faced with court papers.

The letter to GT’s creditors further reveals that it took a whole month to make a single boule and the costs associated with one cylinder ran in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Adding insult to injury, more than half of the boules were of poor quality and therefore couldn’t be used to make iPhone screens, people familiar with the matter say.

Finally, the same sources tell the paper that “GT stored unusable cylinders in rows in an area of the Mesa factory that employees labeled the ‘boule graveyard’.”