According to a recent study released by Omdia, with advances in display technologies such as bend radius (BR) and light transmission (TR), shipments of convertible displays will be 22 million units in 2022 and 117.7 million units in 2029, accounting for 2.7% of the flat panel display market.

Omdia defines convertible displays based on bending radius and light transmission and classifies them into various forms such as bendable displays, foldable displays, rollable displays, stretchable displays and transparent displays.

Among them, foldable displays are rapidly proliferating through advanced smartphone applications and are expected to become the most mainstream form of convertible display development by 2029. Specifically, by 2029, shipments of foldable displays will increase to 107.5 million units, reaching a 2.5% share of the overall flat panel display market, with a CAGR of 28.0% from 2022-2029.

Omdia's analysis says that organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are expected to be the most talked about technology during 2022-2029. OLED displays are self-emitting, thin-layer structures that are flexible and transparent and can be used to design a variety of deformable displays (e.g., foldable displays).

"Over the past 20 years, most panel manufacturers have demonstrated or introduced a wide variety of deformable displays," said Jerry Kang, research manager at Omdia, "and OLED displays have proven their versatility across convertible displays, while other display technologies in terms of bending radius and light transmission are quite limited. Liquid crystal displays (LCD) are favored in the display and cooler market where light sources can be easily embedded, and will continue to dominate the transparent display market in terms of shipments."

Today, the main reason behind the slowing growth in shipments of deformable displays is the limited demand for special-purpose products such as foldable smartphones, rollable TVs, and transparent coolers, rather than typical consumer applications such as smartphones, smartwatches, and tablet PCs. While this segment will not grow significantly in the near term, innovative form factors can and have expanded the use of displays, as we have seen with flexible displays, which have rapidly penetrated the smartphone display market.