LG, Samsung and others have been teasing the market with ideas of a flexible smartphone for years.
LG is making good on that claim. In a phone call to investors Wednesday, the company confirmed it will release a flexible OLED screen smartphone by the fourth quarter, likely around the holiday season. OLED technology, which stands for organic light-emitting diode, has been hailed for a couple of years now as the future of digital displays.
After years of product demos, this could be the first flexible smartphone to hit the market. LG recently put its first big OLED TV on the South Korean market. That TV is a whopping 55-inches, only 4 millimeters thin and and priced at $10,300. It also features LG's new SmartTV technology and on-board Wi-Fi. LG also announced this month that curved TVs will be coming sometime this year.
A flexible smartphone could bring LG to the forefront of mobile and boost sales. Samsung and LG have been touting OLED prototypes at trade shows for more than four years, according to The Verge,
LG chief technology officer Skott Ahn told Forbes magazine at CES 2013 that the company is "looking at flexible and curved solutions, which one is most attractive. The real value we can give consumers after evaluating very carefully. There are lots of options, for example just curved for a phone call."
The technology isn't easy. According to Korean news site etnews, production and development of a possible Samsung flexible smartphone has been hampered by flaws in the manufacturing process. The company has shown off bendable phones and even said it is working on new technologies such as foldable, flexible and transparent displays.
Perhaps LG's move is to beat its rival Samsung in the OLED smartphone market. The company's newest upcoming phone, the Optimus G2, could even be the title-holder of "first flexible smartphone."
