Rollable OLEDs: introduction and market status

Samsung Display unveiled a 18.1" rollable OLED laptop display at CES 2025, one that can roll down to 13.1" when closed. The company today announced that it aims to begin mass producing rollable OLED displays in April 2025. This will mark the first ever mass produced rollable display (apart for the limited volume production of LG's 65" rollable TV screens, that are discontinued).

During CES, Lenovo demonstrated the first laptop to use such a rollable OLED, the ThinkBook Plus G6 Rollable laptop. Lenovo plans to launch it globally in June 2025. The ThinkBook Plus G6 Rollable will have a 14" 5:4 display when rolled in, and a 16.7" 8:9 display when opened. That's an increase of almost 50% in screen size. The price of Lenovo rollable laptop will start at $3,499 - this is a ultra premium device.

Samsung Display is set to show new OLED technologies at CES 2025, including new foldable display, rollable ones, automotive displays, next-gen QD-OLED panels and more.

So first up, Samsung will be showing a 18.1 foldable OLED display (which it says is the world's largest). This panel is suitable for IT devices - to enable devices that combine tablet, laptop and monitor devices into one. When folded, this display is 13.1" in size. 

According to a report from Korea, Samsung is progressing with its rollable OLED development project, and the company aims to launch its first rollable smartphone in 2025. When fully opened, the phone will sport a very large 12.4" display. Interestingly, Samsung apparently will implement an under-the-display camera solution.

Samsung's acceleration of its rollable phone project is seen as the Korean device maker's response to Huawei's tri-folding smartphone, the Mate XT. It is seen that this was an embarrassment for Samsung, that recently also to witness LG Display's leading over it with tandem OLED production. It will remain to be seen whether Samsung's acceleration will lead to problems in quality and reliability - which happened when it launched the world's first foldable phone back in 2019.

Last month China-based Voyah announced a new international all-electric SUV called the Zhiyin, that includes several innovative technologies. The taillights of the car are OLED lighting based, with 33 individually controlled OLED units on both the upper and lower sections, creating unique light patterns. We assumed that Yeolight is the OLED panel supplier, and indeed now the company confirmed that.

In addition to the OLED taillights, the Zhiyin will also an AMOLED display - a "curved sliding screen" that can "slide to accommodate different user needs". While this is not confirmed, we assume that this is a similar display to the one Hongqi just revealed yesterday - a sliding rollable 14.2" AMOLED panel produced by Visionox.

China's Hongqi launched its latest luxury executive sedan, the Guoya (国雅), as part of the Hongqi Golden Sunflower series. The model was previously known as the HongqiL1.

The Hongqi Guoya adopts a 14.2" rollable (sliding) AMOLED display for the center multimedia display. This is the first time such an automotive sliding AMOLED display is produced commercially (and the only second rollable screen following LG's 2020 rollable 65" OLED TV which is now discontinued). The AMOLED display is produced by Visionox, and we know that it adopts an Ultra-Thin-Glass cover. Visionox says that the display weights less than 250 grams, and it has been tested for over 200,000 cycles. 

China-based Tianma had an impressive booth at Displayweek 2024, showing numerous OLED and microLED displays and prototypes.

For the automotive market, Tianma showed three new display prototypes. First up is a 13" slidable OLED, with an embedded touch panel, aimed towards car dashboards or center controls.

During Displayweek 2024, Visionox demonstrated many OLED display technologies and panels, and also an interesting microLED prototypes (produced by its subsidiarity Vistar).

Visionox is in the final stages of development of its ViP maskless display production process, and the company showcased some nice ViP smartphone panel prototypes (the technology can be used for any panel size). ViP offers a high improvement in aperture ratio (69% up from 29%) which results in low power consumption and brightness (up to 4X according to Visionox), improved lifetime (up to 6X), improved PPI and more.

TCL CSOT demonstrated its latest displays, technologies and prototypes at Display Week 2024. The company is focused on inkjet printing technologies, and a lot of the displays on show were indeed printed.

So first up, we TCL demonstrated a 14" 2880x1800 400 nits 30-120Hz ink-jet printed LTPO AMOLED display. The display is produced on a glass substrate, with thin film encapsulation (a 'hybrid OLED').

There are some reports that Lenovo is developing a new tablet device that will use Samsung's 17" slidable AMOLED display. The display will be 13" in size when closed, and will be able to roll (slide) up to 17". Lenovo hopes to launch the tablet by 2025.

Back in 2022, Intel demonstrated a laptop device with a 17" rollable AMOLED display, produced by Samsung Display. Since then SDC demonstrated several similar concepts, including a panel that is both foldable and rollable.

BOE had a large demonstration at Displayweek 2024, showing several display technologies and many new panels and prototypes.

First up we have a slidable OLED display, one of the largest we've seen, at 31.6". The display offers a resolution of 5944x1672, a sliding distance of just over 260 mm (BOE says its the world's longest) and a sliding radius of 5 mm.