Gadgetory

right alongside where's my flying car comes where's my folding phone right we're back into another hot rumor season that we're just on the cusp supposedly of rollable bendable foldable electronics let's get out in front of a hype and see what's really out there first of all some terminology foldable and flexible economy in two different things flexible typically means a display that can be flexed in manufacturing and hold that shape look at something like the edges of a galaxy edge phone or even an Apple watch it's not a perfectly flat display but it doesn't move after it's manufactured then you've got foldable and that very clearly promises that you can take a piece of finished electronics and you can fold it repeatedly many times over the course of your ownership that's dramatic stuff like some of the prototypes we've seen of recent rollable full-size screens or a samsung phone prototype that would fold right down the middle by you doing it and somewhere in the middle we might want to categorize bendable look at something like an LG G flex phone has a really significant amount of give but it doesn't fold or a Samsung television that can go from flat to gradually curved upon command but again doesn't fold taken together as a continuum these various forms are no longer niche IHS research predicts that stretchable rollable foldable or bendable displays taken together will be 51% of all displays shipping by the year 2020 boasting a compound annual growth rate of 58% from now till 2020 that means about 180 million units a year by that year and research firm ID Tech X projects the majority of those will go into phones followed by tablets wearables cars and planes but the real Wow in the marketplace that will get consumers attention aggregated is when we have electronics that can fold and an acute angle and then be used again the different form factor when they're flat now the hurdles for all these manipulable screens and electronics are basically in three buckets repeatability can the flexible part of the electronics do that many times and not break thinness most foldable design prototypes I've seen Sacrifice thin for the folding part and durability many of the new flexible displays I've seen get rid of a glass front and have one made of plastic instead now beyond those engineering hurdles what are the use cases in other words what are you going to do with these things the idea of a phone that can be a very handheld size but then open up into something more immersive like a tablet that seems to make some sense we've also seen prototypes like what lenovo has been showing where you've got a wrist wearable that can snap out into a rigid flat phone on demand and once all of this use case and engineering stuff is settled the question is can it be done economically so we're not paying a premium for what could be seen as a gimmick something called roll-to-roll manufacturing is becoming very powerful in electronics manufacturing and that could be a key way to get scale at low cost for these new flexible components so a lot of hard and soft hurdles are lying out there for the world of flexible electronics and flexible displays in particular but our seemingly limitless appetite for upholstering our lives in displays leave the door open for some degree of success