Consumer electronics giant Samsung has unveiled a curved screen OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) television at the 2013 International CES in Las Vegas.
The company promises the curved panel display will allow for multi-dimensional special effects and a more immersive panorama viewing experience than is possible with regular TVs.
“Samsung is dedicated to developing innovation television solutions, beyond what consumers could ever expect, or could even imagine. We will continue our tradition of developing Samsung TV innovations by steadily introducing new TV technology that helps enhance the lives of users, even beyond the world’s first curved OLED TV,” says Samsung Electronics executive vice president of visual displays HS Kim.
The news comes after glass manufacturer Corning developed a bendable form of glass known as Willow Glass, as SmartCompany reported in June last year.
Samsung was one of the first companies to announce it was attempting to commercialise the flexible glass on an industrial scale, with Korean press reports surfacing in July that the Korean electronics giant was working on flexible AMOLED displays for smartphones and tablets.
By August, Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology announced they had developed a prototype battery that could bend without losing its electrical charge, overcoming a key challenge to developing flexible smart devices.
A BBC report in December confirmed that a number of major consumer electronics companies were investing in flexible device technologies, including LG, Philips, Sharp, Sony and Nokia.
The report also notes the development of Graphene – a lightweight carbon-based transparent material which is flexible, as strong as a diamond yet only one atom thick – has given the industry a possible replacement material for the silicon traditionally used in microprocessors.
However, Samsung ran into production difficulties in October, with reports surfacing that a “senior industry official” claimed problems with production yields were delaying the mass-production of flexible AMOLED displays. At the time, the company hoped to resolve the issues by the close of 2012, with mass-production expected at the time to begin in early 2013.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
