CREDIT: Twitter/KlLlan

LG Electronics announced that it will start its mass-production of flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for LG smartphones and will launch it in 2014.

"LG Display is launching a new era of flexible displays for smartphones with its industry-leading technology," said Dr. Sang Deog Yeo, LG Display Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.

"The flexible display market is expected to grow quickly as this technology is expected to expand further into diverse applications including automotive displays, tablets and wearable devices."

"Our goal is to take an early lead in the flexible display market by introducing new products with enhanced performance and differentiated designs next year."

The South Korean company already uses the said technology in its curved OLED TV sets.

The difference between the LG curved TV screen and the curved smartphone screen is the TV screens are mounted in fixed shells so they cannot be re-shaped or be bent by the owner. Whereas, the smartphone screens' panels, according to a press release from LG's display division, would be "bendable and unbreakable."

This was made possible by building the flexible OLED panel on plastic substrates instead of glass and by attaching the protection film to the back of the panel, as well as applying film-type encapsulation technology to it.

"The new display is vertically concave from top to bottom with a radius of 700mm [28in], opening up a world of design innovations in the smartphone market," added LG.

"What's more, it is also the world's lightest, weighing a mere 7.2g [0.25oz] even with a 6in screen, the largest among current smartphone OLED displays."

Plus, it will only be 0.44mm thin, making it the slimmest flexible OLED panel in the world.

The exciting news from LG comes after Samsung made a similar announcement several weeks ago.

Samsung said that it intended to launch a special edition of the Galaxy Note 3 in the latter part of October 2013. Unlike the LG curved smartphone screen which curves from top-to-bottom, Samsung curves from side-to-side.

Research firm IHS Display Bank predicts that the global flexible display industry will see dramatic growth and become a $1.5 billion market by 2016, and will exceed $10 billion by 2019.

In response to this, LG Display plans to further improve its flexible display technologies, which includes introducing foldable and rollable displays in different sizes.