Digital signage approaches ‘generation flex’

by all | 20 June 2013 8:30 am

Demand for flexible displays, ranging from smart phone screens to digital signs mounted on buildings, are set to undergo massive growth over the next seven years, according to a new report from IHS.

In its Flexible Display Technology and Market Forecast, the research firm predicts shipments will expand by a factor of nearly 250 during the period, rising from 3.2 million units in 2013 to 792 million in 2020. Market revenue, it says, will increase from $100,000 to $41.3 billion.

“Flexible displays hold enormous potential, creating whole new classes of products and enabling applications that were impractical or impossible before,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, IHS’s director for mobile and emerging display technologies. “From smart phones with displays that curve around the side to smart watches with wraparound screens to giant video advertisements on curved building walls, the uses will be limited only by the imagination of designers.”

While some display panels currently entering the market use a flexible substrate for purposes of durability and thinness, they are flat and cannot be bent or rolled. A new generation of displays can be conformed, moulded and bent to the curved surfaces of phones and other devices.

These will be followed, IHS expects, by truly flexible and rollable displays, which users will be able to manipulate, e.g. to save space when not in use. Finally, the firm envisions disposable displays, which will be inexpensive enough to replace paper.

Also, while flexible displays are expected to be used in smaller forms over the next several years, particularly personal electronic devices, IHS predicts larger sizes will become available, extending the technology to TV screens and digital signage.

IHS cites a Society for Information Display (SID) event that took place in Vancouver this May, where Samsung Display president and CEO Kinam Kim discussed flexible organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) suitable for ‘wearable electronics,’ LG Display exhibited a flexible OLED panel made of plastic that was reportedly unbreakable and Corning showcased Willow Glass, which can be used with both OLEDs and liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and could allow future displays to be wrapped around structures.

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/digital-signage-approaches-generation-flex/

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