Mark Hibben, writing for Seeking Alpha (Free Reg-wall):

Foxconn’s purchase of a 66% stake in Sharp for the reduced price of $3.5 billion is questionable on its own merits. Foxconn is getting LCD screen production capacity that is rapidly becoming obsolete as the industry transitions to OLED screens. The deal only makes sense from Apple’s perspective. Apple needed to prevent an interruption in the supply of LCD screens for which it is dependent on Sharp.

And:

The fundamental question is, why go through the trouble? Everyone knows that LCD screens are being supplanted by active matrix organic LED (AMOLED) screens for mobile devices. The two most important AMOLED screen makers are Samsung Display and LG Display.

The investment came down to practical near-term necessity for Apple. Apple simply couldn’t afford to let Sharp go under, but it didn’t want to be saddled with directly managing Sharp’s LCD production as an outright owner. Apple is very happy with its current supply chain model of using contract suppliers such as Sharp and Foxconn.

Apple is in my view using Foxconn as a proxy to assure an uninterrupted supply of LCD screens. As such, it probably had to incentivize Foxconn to take on the burden of Sharp.

Interesting bit of speculation by Mark Hibben. Rings true to me. The story goes: Apple needs Sharp in the short term, makes the deal work for Foxconn with some guarantees, plans to modernize sharp to serve their needs in the long term. Interesting.