As mobile makers look to differentiate product offerings, the Wall Street Journal reports Samsung plans to mass produce a somewhat novel form factor-- devices with flexible displays.
Using OLED technology, the displays are made out of plastic (not glass) meaning the result is unbreakable, lighter and bendable, as well as cheaper to produce.
Samsung actually owns the suitable technology, thanks to electrowetting technology developer Liquivista.
According to "a person familiar with the situation," Samsung will release such devices sometime during H1 2013. We have no idea what such flexible devices will look like, but they might be similar to the prototypes the company showed off back at CES 2011.
As well as novelty value, bendy devices represent a push towards alternative display technologies. Sharp and LG Display sell displays with "in cell technology" integrating touch sensors directly into the LCD, eliminating the separate touchscreen layer.
Samsung is not the only company stretching out more flexible productions-- as early as 2009 Sony showed off a flexible display at CES, while a year earlier Plastic Logic had a bendable e-reader. More recently a bendable "Nokia Kinetic Device" was spotted at Nokia World 2011.
