According to The Korea Times, LG will begin mass producing flexible OLED displays during the fourth quarter of this year. The company has also reaffirmed that there will indeed be a smartphone on store shelves using this technology by the end of 2013. The KT piece doesn’t offer too much new information, though it did say that LG is (obviously) peddling their new display technology to other handset makers. Their statement reads:
“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.”
Samsung on the other hand, they’re allegedly having trouble reaching adequate yields for their own flexible displays. Those of you expecting to see an “unbreakable” Note III better stop dreaming, because it isn’t going to happen.
What exactly is a flexible display? Well, you know how your screen is made up of pixels, right? Those pixels are normally “glued” to a sheet of glass. In industry parlance, the glass is called a substrate. Flexible displays simply have a substrate made out of plastic. That’s it.