There's an interesting story posted at Mobipicker (first time I hear of that blog) that claims that Xiaomi's CEO confirmed that the company will release a smartphone with a curved display - and not only that, but the blog says that the display will be a 5.7" curved OLED - produced by LG Display.
that Samsung Display is of course producing such displays - and even supplying them to companies other than Samsung Electronics - but is LGD ready to do the same soon?
LG Display has been developing such technologies for a long time, and back in January 2015 the company already demonstrated the prototype you see above - a 6" plastic OLED display that curves on both edges. The 2015 panel featured a 1280x720 resolution, was 0.7 mm thick and could reach a brightness of 300 nits. Not stellar specs, but LGD had a lot of time to work on that.
LG currently produces plastic-based OLEDs in its Gen-4.5 fab, with a monthly capacity of 14,000 substrates (more than double its capacity in the beginning of 2014). LG Display's flexible AMOLEDs are used in LG's mobile phones (the G Flex 2), wearable devices (such as the Watch Urbane) and in Apple's Watch. So LG's flexible OLED capacity is quite limited at this stage.
LG announced plans to expand its small OLED production - the E5 6-Gen (1500x1850 mm) flexible OLED fab was announced in July 2015, and this $900 million line will have a capacity of 7,500 monthly substrates - or 1.5 million 5.5" panels. The new fab is scheduled to begin mass production in the first half of 2017, though so we should not really expect devices using displays produced at the E5 line before 2018.
Interestingly, though, In November 2015 it was reported that LG Display is in talks with China's Xiaomi to provide OLED panels for smartphones. The report said that Xiaomi aims to start receiving panels in the second quarter of 2016. So perhaps this new report is true - and maybe Xiaomi does not aim to sell a lot of the curved devices, and only requires a modest amount of panels from LGD.
