LG has announced that they will begin mass producing flexible OLED displays for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2013. The company expects to produce 12,000 sheets of flexible OLED every month.
“LG Display has completed the development of our first flexible displays. We’ve already shipped samples to clients including LG Electronics. LG Display will mass produce flexible displays from the fourth quarter of this year,” LG told Korean Times.
What is even more interesting is that the first device that will use the new flexible OLED from LG will be an LG produced smartphone, although not details on the device have been released as yet.
Also uncertain is to what extent the panel will actually bend. Although concept devices which can physical flex and move in the user’s hands have been shown by LG Display and others, they may remain the stuff of science fiction for some time.
Since OLED supports individual portions of the display being powered up without necessarily activating the entire panel, that means such a phone could use significantly less power when showing information that does not demand the whole screen.
Whatever the implementation, it’s a race to see whether LG or Samsung can commercialize the technology first. Samsung Mobile Display showed off how such a device might work back at CES and having originally hoped to have the bendy screens rolling off production lines sometime in 2012. However the company was forced to push back its own production plans until this year.
