Apple has reportedly gotten out of $22 million contract with the British from Nanoco that “together with its subsidiaries, engages in the research, development, manufacture, and licensing of cadmium and heavy-metal-free quantum dots (CFQD), and semiconductor nanomaterials for use in various commercial applications.”

When it comes to camera sensors, the CFQD technology allows for a much better light control compared to the current silicon ones that is supposed to be vastly superior to anything else out there. It’s just that Apple concluded it would be too costly to implement on a mass scale. 

Each year, its iPhone franchise sells tens of millions of handsets, and production of that many quantum camera sensors would have been prohibitively expensive, it turns out. Oh well, we’ll never now what Apple’s camera software would have achieved with these groundbreaking sensors but one can only hope work towards lowering the price of these next-gen camera will continue.