EL SEGUNDO, CA – iSuppli Corp. forecasts the total flexible display market will reach $2.8 billion by 2013, up 35 times from about $80 million in 2007.
 
Flexible displays are being used for a multitude of products, including e-readers/e-paper, electronic display cards, electronic shelf labels, automotive applications, clothing/wearable displays, removable storage devices and point-of-purchase/public signage and advertisements.
 
“Flexible displays are intuitively appealing to end users and product designers because of their ruggedness, thinness, light weight and novelty,” said Jennifer Colegrove, Ph.D., senior analyst for emerging displays at iSuppli. “Such displays also offer manufacturers the potential for inexpensive fabrication because they can be made using new printing methods or roll-to-roll processing. Furthermore, flexible displays have the advantage of easy and relatively inexpensive shipping and safety handling compared to conventional rigid screens. When flexible displays break, they don’t have any sharp edges that can cause injuries or further damage.”
 
Before this year, there were no active matrix flexible displays that could provide the kind of image quality that users expect from their LCD-TVs and PC monitors, says iSuppli. Because of this, 2008 represents “Year One” for the AM flexible display market.
 
More than a dozen display technologies can be made into flexible screens, including traditional LCD, bi-stable LCD, OLED, electrophoretic, electrochromic and Electroluminescent.