OLED displays — Organic Light Emitting Diodes — have been the Next Big Thing in display technology for well over five years. Between technical challenges, patent disputes, and the awful finances of building flat-panel displays, they’ve never quite made it to market in a big way. That’s a shame, especially for the wearables market, because the brightness, low power draw, and low weight, and flexibility of OLEDs makes them a natural.
LG, however, just put out a press releasee
touting the start of mass production of flexible, curved OLEDs for smartphones. There are some specs about the displays — the amount of curvature, thickness, and weight — and guesstimates about the size of the market ($1.5 billion in 2016, $10 billion in 2019).
But what’s intriguing here is that LG doesn’t say who’s going to buy these displays. Committing to this technology implies that someone is going to be on the receiving end of the assembly line. Thin, light, curved, high-contrast, innovative? Any bets we’re seeing the first press release for the iWatch?