Apple on Monday announced they’re awarding $45 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to Corning Incorporated, a supplier of precision glass for iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. The funding will expand Corning’s manufacturing capacity in the US and drive research and development into innovative new technologies that support durability and long-lasting product life, building on both Apple and Corning’s deep commitment to protecting the environment.
Corning has already received $450 million from Apple’s $5 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund over the last four years. Apple’s investment helps support more than 1,000 jobs across Corning’s US operations in Kentucky and other facilities. The investment has also helped facilitate research and development into state-of-the-art glass processes, which led to the creation of Ceramic Shield, a new material that is tougher than any smartphone glass.
“Apple and Corning have a long history of working together to accomplish the impossible,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, in a statement. “From the very first iPhone glass, to the revolutionary Ceramic Shield on the iPhone 12 lineup, our collaboration has changed the landscape of smartphone cover design and durability. Ceramic Shield is a prime example of the technologies that are possible when deep innovation meets the power of American manufacturing. We’re so proud to work alongside Corning, whose 170-year-old legacy is a testament to the ingenuity of the US workforce.”
Apple’s innovation and investment with Corning fueled the creation of Ceramic Shield for the iPhone 12 lineup.
With support from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund, experts at both companies worked together to develop a new glass-ceramic, which gets its strength from nano-ceramic crystals, produced in Corning’s plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the facility where every generation of iPhone glass has been made.
The new material was enabled by a high-temperature crystallization step which forms nano-crystals within the glass matrix. Those specialized crystals are kept small enough that the material is transparent. The resulting material makes up the revolutionary Ceramic Shield, which Apple used to fashion the new front cover featured on iPhone in the iPhone 12 lineup. Prior to Ceramic Shield, embedded crystals have traditionally affected the material’s transparency, a crucial factor for the front cover of iPhone because so many features, including the display, the camera, and sensors for Face ID, need optical clarity to function.
“We are incredibly proud of our collaboration with Apple on Ceramic Shield, made possible in part through the Advanced Manufacturing Fund and the hard work and dedication of hundreds of individuals at Corning and Apple,” said Wendell P. Weeks, Corning’s chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement. “We thank Apple for our longstanding product-development partnership and for their continued commitment to supporting the American workforce. The deep investment they’ve provided for new manufacturing technology in our Harrodsburg, Kentucky, facility is not only fueling life-changing innovation, it’s also helping us sustain vital communities where we live and work – a fundamental objective at both of our companies. Together, we’re developing a world-class workforce, engaging them in new technologies, and creating opportunities for learning and training.”
Corning has well-established training and education programs to create career advancement opportunities for their employees, fostering the kind of specialized workforce that can deliver innovations like Ceramic Shield. These programs include funding through the Corning Incorporated Foundation that helped build a new manufacturing center at local trade school Bluegrass Community Technical College, to support the development of trade positions at the Harrodsburg plant and within the community. The plant also has a state-licensed apprenticeship program for employees to continue their professional development.
Jason Alexander has been working at Corning’s Harrodsburg plant as a mechanical maintenance associate for more than 20 years and is a graduate of the company’s mechanical maintenance apprenticeship program.
“It means a lot to me — personally and professionally — to be part of a company that invests as much in its employees and its community as it does the latest innovations,” said Alexander in a statement. “This year has been incredibly challenging for so many, and I am proud to be part of this team, and grateful to have had new opportunities to further develop my skills through the apprenticeship program and be part of so many cutting-edge projects. Thanks to Apple’s support and Corning’s leadership, the future is bright here in Harrodsburg.”
Apple’s longstanding relationship with Corning over the past decade is based on the company’s unique expertise, strong community presence, and commitment to protecting the environment. Corning is part of Apple’s Clean Energy Program, which is designed to advance the use of renewable energy throughout the company’s supply chain and is an integral part of Apple’s efforts to become carbon neutral by 2030. As part of that commitment, Corning has deployed multiple clean energy solutions, including the recent installation of a solar panel system at its Harrodsburg, Kentucky, facility. The company has procured enough renewable energy to cover all of its Apple manufacturing in the US.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple supports 2.7 million jobs across all 50 U.S. states and recently announced plans to add 20,000 jobs across the country while contributing more than $430 billion to the American economy over the next five years. Apple’s $430 billion investments in America include working with more than 9,000 suppliers and companies large and small across dozens of sectors, including silicon engineering, 5G, and manufacturing. Apple established its Advanced Manufacturing Fund in 2017 to support world-class innovation and high-skilled manufacturing jobs across America. Awards from the $5 billion fund have led to breakthrough innovations, from supporting the development of advanced laser technology in Texas, to accelerating the supply of COVID-19 sample collection kits for US hospitals, and more.
Where are all of the black actors with whom Apple usually peppers their promotional announcements and press releases?
Apple is usually very good with making a race that comprises 13.4% of the U.S. look like they’re a 90% majority. You know, like the rest of the U.S. companies and their insufferable ads.
Apple’s racist skin color tabulator must have had the week off.
Wait, not every American family is biracial like every TV ad has been shoving in our face for the last few years in a mass media brainwashing attempt?
How often did you protest the fact that NO biracial couples were visible in TV advertising from the 1940s until about 2013? Even now, 70% of the ads with an interracial couple show a white man with a black partner, even though the reverse pattern is actually more common.
As my Choctaw grandmother often said, “If you don’t like a diverse America, go back to Europe.”
Who in the f said they “didn’t like/want diversity in America?”
You seemingly have a pathological need to divert, confuse and or, conflate.
It’s really quite simple…reply to what’s written and keep in control the narrative that fuels your imagination.
It’s all his years of training as a paid liar/ prosecutor that makes him think we are a jury he can outsmart by sounding soooo smart.
But hey, that kind of drivel got Obama elected so apparently it works on SOME folks….
I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that somebody who gets bent out of shape at seeing black faces on television is not supportive of diversity.
Except he didn’t say that, but it didn’t stop you from interpreting however you want in order bloviate and project.
Yes, you’ll critically analyze the sentence to prove everyone who is not a lIberal is in fact a white-supremicist Nazi nationalist rather than trying to understand the meaning of his sentence.
This is what a professional liar does, first distort the truth, then project your inner evil as someone else’s belief, and finally make your premise seem as being good for all ‘common folk’, which is actually an insult to their IQ (if they used it).
Orwell warned there’d be dazed like you….
Well, I’m super happy to see television and advertising are starting to look more like the world around me.
And I thought it was just me that noticed this shift in advertising on TV. You don’t correct a wrong by adding another. Just make the ads reflective of the overall population. Asians and Hispanics are hardly represented at all.
We are far from over-representation of visible minorities in the media.
Where was all of this enthusiasm for balance when the faces of minorities were incredibly scarce (or represented by white people with makeup) in the media for decades and decades and decades?
Even today, a Black, Asian or Latino person is way more likely to be cast as a sidekick or in another supporting role. How many network procedurals have a Black lead? More than 15% of American households have a Black mother and/or father. Do 15% of sitcoms feature a Black family today? Do one-in-six romantic comedies have a Black lead?
Is now the time to be getting upset at seeing a slightly darker complexion on our screens? Can’t we, please, be a just little more excited about this?