The market for rollable OLED displays is expected to become a “thing” in 2020, though shipments are expected to remain low for the foreseeable future as they will remain niche products, according to a forecast by IHS Markit.
The analyst firm this week said it expects to see around 100,000 rollable OLED displays shipped in 2020, rising to 1.3 million by 2026, according to a report by The Elec. The market will see a compound annual growth rate of 167% from 2019 to 2026, IHS Markit’s analysts said.
As expected, IHS Markit say the first company to begin commercializing rollable OLED displays will be LG Display, which already dominates the market for larger, TV-sized displays. The South Korean company has said it will finally launch its 65-inch rollable OLED television, the OLED 65RX (pictured), in the first half of this year, after postponing its initial plans for a launch in 2019. The OLED 65RX was first revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2019, and so its debut has been a long time coming. However, there is a chance the coronavirus pandemic could delay its launch yet again. And with an asking price of around $60,000 per TV, IHS Markit says it doesn’t expect to see much demand for the OLED 65RX in the immediate future.
LG Display isn’t the only company working on rollable OLED products though. Japan’s Sharp is also looking at entering the market after showing off a prototype of a 30-inch rollable 4K OLED display at the Inter BEE 2019 show in Makuhari, Japan, last November. Sharp’s display is notably based on a different OLED technology, called RGB OLED, which emits red, green and blue light directly. That’s different from LG’s White OLED (WOLED) technology, where white light is beamed through colour filters, similar to how LCD displays work.
Meanwhile, China’s TCL teased its own prototype of a 31-inch, inkjet printed rollable OLED panel that was developed by its subsidiary Guangdong Coin, at this year’s CES. TCL’s rollable OLED display also uses Quantum Dot technology.
Rollable OLED displays may also have other applications. For example, Samsung Display in 2018 unveiled a prototype of a rollable OLED display for vehicles, while China’s BoE previously demoed a 12.3 inch tablet that uses a rollable OLED display.
IHS Markit said rollable OLED also has potential for other devices such as smartphones and wearables, though these applications are likely to be further away than rollable OLED TVs.
HDTVTest's chief reviewer Vincent Teoh was lucky enough to get a close up look at LG's rollable OLED television at CES 2019:
