Skyrocketing interest of Panel makers in blooming smart watch market

Set makers are launching various smart watch products such as Galaxy Gear and Gear Fit by Samsung and G-Watch by LG after the smart watch by Sony. With this, display companies accelerate development and mass-production of panels for the smart watch.

At present, OLED, LCD and e-paper are the panels applied to the smart watch. Also the flexible OLED is preferred for the wearable smart watch. Samsung Display is currently mass-producing the flexible panel for the smart watch, and LG Display will also start to manufacture them in the latter half of this year. Futaba of Japan has completed the development of PMOLED for the smart watch panel, and AUO introduced an ultra-thin OLED panel showing its at SID 2014 will to enter the panel market for the smart watch.

Shipments for the world’s smart watch market in 2014 are expected to 7 million but Apple Inc., aims to sell 9 million products in 2014. Thus, the smart watch market is a business with high potential to grow explosively and is where fierce technology competition will be between the panel makers.

<AUO’s 1.63” ultra-thin panel for smart watch, SID 2014>