LG Display, a subsidiary of LG that is dedicated to creating screen displays, unveiled a new OLED panel that is impossibly thin but excitingly real at the same time.
The new OLED panel was revealed at a press event at the company's home country of South Korea. The display, which is touted as "wallpaper-like," measures only 0.97 millimeter (0.038 inch) thick. The 55-inch screen also tips the scale at 1.9 kilograms (4.2 pounds).
The most eye-catching feature of the panel is the ease in sticking its thin body to the wall through a magnetic mat and then peeling it off again like wallpaper. It is even thinner than the company's flagship OLED TVs. This can be attributed to the fact that it doesn't use the same circuitry to function like other TVs. Most of the panel's electronics are hidden somewhere off-screen.
LG Display also unveiled a convex OLED screen panel designed for digital signage normally used for large-scale outdoor advertising.
According to LG, the advanced display allows a TV to achieve a slimmer and lighter design because it can emit light by itself using electric current with no backlight unit compared to a liquid crystal display (LCD).
Yeo Sang-Deog, who leads the OLED division of LG Display, promised to boost the company's OLED production to a substantial level starting in the third quarter of the year in order to meet customer demand.
OLED offers consumers and the industry as a whole "groundbreaking technology," Yeo believes.
"We should be able to supply a satisfactory volume to our clients from July or August, which means we're hoping to buckle down production as well as promotion from the third quarter," stated Yeo.
So far, the costs involved in producing OLED screens are still quite high. This could be partly blamed on a historically low yield for producing displays that are truly functional. When more waste is incurred, it will cause the screens to have a higher production cost. These high costs are then passed on to consumers. One example is the price of LG's 65-inch 4K OLED TV set at $9,000.
LG Display plans to sell at least 600,000 OLED panels before the year ends then increase the volume to as many as 1.5 million units by the following year. The company will also continue to enhance its plastic OLED technology to have an increased presence in small to mid-sized segments. These include creating transparent displays and flexible and rollable displays, which can be used in future vehicle dashboards and wearable devices.
