IHS says that flexible display shipments will grow quickly in the near future. They expect about 3.2 million such displays to ship in 2013, and this will grow to almost 800 million displays by 2020. In terms of revenue, the total market will reach $41.3 billion in 2020. The leading display technology for flexible displays will be OLEDs, which will account for 64% of the market in 2020.
IHS classifies flexible displays into four generations. The first one are plastic-based displays that are unbreakable, but are still flat. The second-gen ones are conformable and can be molded to curved surfaces. The third-gen panels are bendable/rollable - and can be manipulated by end users. The fourth generation are disposable displays- so cheap that they can replace regular paper and be thrown away after use.
