Can Foldable OLED Displays Revive the PC Market?

In a contempo interview with Arimasa Naitoh, considered to be the father of the Lenovo ThinkPad, he told me he's most interested in the concept of a folding portable laptop. When he said it, I figured such a pattern was at least 10 years away, but nosotros might not be waiting that long.

Opinions In discussions with key Asian suppliers last week, they told me they are working on foldable OLED screens now that could hit the market place as early on every bit early 2022.

This idea is not new; it's been a serious vision for mobile manufacturers for some time. Samsung has hinted at a foldable smartphone by belatedly 2022. It'southward thus far been rather pie in the sky, but information technology appears smartphone and laptop computer makers are now seriously focused on finding ways to design gadgets with foldable OLED screen, or FOLED. I admit I am still a fleck skeptical, merely I no longer retrieve that this is a piping dream that'southward a decade away from becoming a reality.

At the laptop level, I think Naitoh-san envisioned a foldable device you could slip in your pocket. At first, a 7-inch device is probably more likely, just that'south still pretty portable. What'southward most intriguing to me near the idea of a FOLED screen is that it gives laptop vendors a new mode to innovate.

While a 7- or 8-inch smartphone sounds ridiculous today, a foldable phablet could really motion such a smartphone into the realm of a serious productivity tool; just this month, we saw ZTE'southward dual-screen Axon Thou, for example. And if new laptops with FOLED screens become as portable as smartphones, it could change the manner people work with them.

Now I admit that while I do written report design concepts for mobile equally function of my enquiry, I am pretty lousy at actually forecasting innovative designs. Merely I can imagine that if you give Johnny Ive at Apple or the design gurus at most smartphone and PC makers a new palette of components to work with, they could turn out some pretty astonishing new mobile products in the near future. Knowing that this type of component is just around the corner makes me even more excited most our mobile future.

About Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Artistic Strategies since 1981 and has provided research to near of the leading hardware and software vendors in the manufacture including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic annotator, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it hit the market, and identifying multimedia as a major trend in written reports as early as 1984. He has authored major industry studies on PC, portable computing, …