Samsung has great confidence in the future for flexible OLED displays, and has now accelerated their mass production plans. Later in 2012 Samsung will begin producing the first flexible OLED panels.
Flexible OLED displays in 2012
Imagine a near future where you can roll up your tablet or use a curved widescreen desktop monitor. This might be closer than you expect.
Samsung’s 0.2 mm flexible OLED panel
Flexible displays are obviously only the first step before we can create truly bendable electronics because it also requires other flexible components but the OLED technology can put us one step closer. Because OLED can be deposited on other substrates than glass – for example plastic – it can become flexible.
Cho Soo-in, responsible for Samsung’s mobile and OLED division, now confirms to Korean newspaper AsiaE that Samsung will produce and commercialize flexible OLED displays later in 2012. The first step is to produce small flexible OLED displays for handheld devices and larger flexible OLED displays later on.
When to expect actual products is left for us to wonder but a document detailing Samsung’s OLED production plans was leaked in 2011. It shows that Samsung hopes to have the first production line for flexible OLEDs online in the third quarter of 2012 and the next production line ready in the second quarter of 2013 – but plans might have changed since then.
Samsung’s future plans for OLED production, source: internal leaked document obtained by oled-display.net
Also notice how two "G8" entries are found at the bottom. G8 is an 8. generation plant that is capable of producing large-size OLED panels. The first one will be ready in the second quarter of 2012, and will be utilized for Samsung’s 55-inch OLED TV. The second one will be ready for mass production in the third quarter of 2013. This is also expected to increase Samsung’s capacity – and possibly make OLED-TV production costs lower.
Samsung confirms plan for flexible OLEDs in 2012
