LCD panels have enabled widescreen TVs thin and light enough to be hung on a wall like a picture – assuming you hangyour pictures with a VESA-compliant wall mount. But LG Display has gone onestep further, showing an OLED panel that can be stuck to a wall likewallpaper – assuming you hang your wallpaper with magnets.
LG Display showcased its 55-inch"wallpaper OLED panel" – or possibly the world's biggest fridge magnet – this week at a media event in Seoul. Incomparison to LG's current flagship 55-inch OLED TV that is 4.3 mm thick, thenew panel is just 0.97 mm thick and weighs 1.9 kg (4.1 lb). It is also flexible, makingit easy to peel off a magnetic mat affixed to the wall.
Competitors such as Samsung and Sonyseem to have largely dropped out of the OLED race and pinned their hopes on the nextevolution of LCD technology, quantum dot. But the head of LG Display's OLED division, YeoSang-deog, promised his company would be scaling up OLED production later thisyear to meet client demand. Although LG Display is an independent company andsupplies panels to a various companies, including Dell, ASUS and Apple, itsbiggest customer is affiliate LG Electronics.
Earlier this year, LG Display released OLEDpanels in 55-, 65- and 77-inch sizes, with LG showing TVs utilizing the panelsat CES. Now the company plans to go even bigger, with Yeo promising a 99-inchunit within the year. But he says it won't be ignoring the small- to mid-sizeddisplays, with plans to continue improvements to its plastic OLED technologyfor use in transparent, rollable and flexible displays for wearable devices andvehicle dashboards.
Yeo added that improvements in yields forOLED panels would be a key factor in helping it achieve sales targets of 600,000OLED panels this year and 1.5 million units in 2016.
"It hastaken a year and half for us to raise the yield to this level (for OLEDs),while it'd taken nearly 10 years to achieve the yield for LCDs," Yeo said.
There's no telling when a wallpaper OLEDmight be headed to the walls of consumers' houses, but the idea of a TV thatsticks to a wall like a fridge magnet is sure to be "attractive" tomany.
Source: LG Display, Yonhap
