Apple Inc pulled a "bait and switch" move to force GT Advanced Technologies into a money-losing deal to supply the iPhone maker with sapphire, according to an affidavit by a senior executive at the company.
In documents unsealed on Friday by a US Bankruptcy Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, GT Advanced chief operating officer Daniel Squiller says Apple offered what would have been GT Advanced's largest sale ever and then changed the terms of the agreement after it was too late for the smaller company to pursue other opportunities.
GT Advanced, a maker of sapphire furnaces that supplied sapphire material to Apple for its smartphone screens, filed for Chapter 11 protection on October 6 and refused to publicly explain why it had imploded, citing confidentiality clauses in its Apple contracts.
The two companies later reached a deal to part ways and allow GT Advanced to proceed with its bankruptcy, but Judge Henry Boroff denied requests by the companies to keep some of the documents in the case under seal.
In a deal struck last year, GT Advanced outfitted a plant owned by Apple in Mesa, Arizona with furnaces that it would use to make scratch-resistant sapphire exclusively for Apple.
"With a classic bait-and-switch strategy, Apple presented GTAT with an onerous and massively one-sided deal in the fall of 2013," Innovative Write.
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