ould the next iPhone roll up to fit in your pocket- Manufacturers set to reveal first 'bendable' gadgets that will never break ?
It could be the next big revolution in electronics - gadgets you can simply fold up to put in your pocket.
Manufacturers have already given us a glimpse of the technology, with Samsung showing off a 'foldable' phone.
Experts say the technology, which could lead to virtually unbreakable
gadgets, could soon be seen in everything from Apple's much-rumoured
iWatch to larger tablets. The touted arrival this year of wearable
gadgets such as computer displays strapped to wrists and in wrap-around
glasses is just a step towards a bigger revolution in screens — those
that can be bent, folded and rolled up, experts say.
Once freed from
today's relatively heavy, breakable and fixed glass displays,
tomorrow's devices may look very different, with screens that can be
rolled out, attached to uneven surfaces, or even stretched.
But there's still some way to go.
'It becomes a product designer's paradise — once the technology is
sorted out,' says Jonathan Melnick, who analyzes display technology for
Lux Research.
There is no shortage of prototypes.
South Korea's
Samsung Electronics this year showed off a display screen that extends
from the side of a device — but obstacles remain: overcoming technical
issues, figuring out how to mass produce parts cheaply, and coming up
with devices compelling enough for gadget buyers.
Screen technology —
with the global small display market expected to more than double to
around $72 billion by 2016, according to DisplaySearch — is still
dominated by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which require a backlight
and sit between two sheets of glass, making the screen a major
contributor to the weight of a device, from laptops to tablets. 'Most of
the weight in a tablet is the glass structure in the display and the
support structure around it to prevent it from cracking,' said Kevin
Morishige, a former engineer at Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Palm.
LCD's dominance is already under threat from lighter Organic Light
Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) that don't need backlighting, are brighter,
offer a wider viewing angle and better color contrast — and can be
printed onto a few layers. However, some manufacturers are already
creating lighter and more flexible glass.
Corning, whose toughened
Gorilla glass became the screen of choice for many smartphones, will
provide phones with curved glass edges as soon as this year.
It is
also now promoting Willow Glass, which can be as thin as a sheet of
paper and is flexible enough to be wrapped around a device or structure.
Initially, Willow will be used as a coating for products like
solar panels, but it is eventually expected to create curved products. A
key selling point for Willow is more efficient production which
involves so-called roll-to-roll manufacturing, like a printing press,
rather than today's more costly batch manufacturing.
But the
commercialization of Willow as a flexible product is some way off, James
Clappin, who heads Corning's glass technology group, told Reuters - and
glass has its limits.
'You can bend it, but you can't keep flexing
it,' said Adrian Burden, a UK consultant who has worked on several
start-ups related to display technology, and holds patents in the field.
This means that while glass is likely to continue to play a
leading role in devices with curved displays, screens that users can
bend, fold and roll will likely be plastic.
But plastic is not as
robust as glass. 'As soon as you introduce plastic substrates you have
all kinds of issues with sensitivity to the environment,' says Burden.
So while OLED and plastic would seem to be companion technologies they
create an extra problem when laid together: they need so-called barrier
films to prevent the various layers from leaking oxygen and moisture.
Even after the success of Gorilla Glass, popularized by the iPhone,
Corning is having to work hard to prepare customers for Willow displays.
Clappin said customers want thinner devices and easier to produce
glass, but Willow requires a completely different manufacturing set-up.
'When we talk about commercializing Willow a big part of our
development activity is enabling the ecosystem to handle what is
essentially a brand new material,' Clappin added.
'Nobody's
accustomed to working with glass that bends and moves. It's a new
material. The ecosystem needs to be trained to handle it.'
He sees
demand, particularly from video gamers, for Willow-based curved screens,
but remains less convinced about rollable or foldable screens.
'Conformable is in the near future.
'As far as flexible, bendable, fold-upable goes, I see that further out
and I'm not even sure that's a viable product,' he said. For companies
with deep pockets, like Samsung, this can mean building prototypes such
as those displayed at international technology shows.
But that doesn't guarantee success in selling products. Sony, for example, promoted flexible OLED displays back in 2007.
'Six years later they've not come up with anything,' says Zhang Jie,
senior scientist at Singapore's Institute of Metals Research and
Engineering.
'If Samsung's going to really drive this the application really needs to drive people and make them want it.'
This slows down the process.
In late 2011, Samsung told analysts it planned to introduce flexible
displays into handsets 'some time in 2012, hopefully the earlier part
than later,
'but a year later the company said the technology was
still "under development." In an investment note last month Jefferies
said that while Samsung may introduce "unbreakable" screens this year,
it didn't expect to see flexible displays in Samsung devices until
2014-15.
Ultimately, teasing out the technical problems may be only half the battle.
'This is the eternal question of the speciality materials industry,'
says Lutz Grubel, Japan-based head of marketing for German glass maker
Schott's Xensation Cover 3-D glass.
