From the past few years, many industry participants and consumers have aspired of a display technology that would break through the limitations of glass-based displays like weight, size, and ruggedness. The advent of flexible display would overcome these limitations. Flexible display is a thin, rollable display used in a variety of applications such as e-paper, digital signage, smartphone, TV, and other consumer products. Flexible displays are on LCD, e-paper, LED or OLED. Out of these display technologies, flexible OLED display is the advanced type of display. These displays are looked upon as the future mainstream display for a number of consumer products. There have been significant developments going on in the field of flexible electronics and printed display. Flexible display-based devices have started entering the consumer goods market. However, it is still at the novelty stage, since it has not penetrated the reasonable number of audience. The two basic display technology types are emissive and non-emissive. Emissive display comprises OLED and e-paper display technology, whereas non-emissive display comprises LCD and LCOS. In the overall flexible display market, e-paper display targets the applications like smartcard, POP/ESL, wearable display, etc. Flexible OLED display targets the applications like smartphone, TV, laptop, tablet, etc. LCD targets the applications like e-reader, laptop, TV, etc. However, emissive displays are more compatible as a flexible display than non-emissive. Hence, flexible display market is likely to have larger market share for emissive display types.

The total flexible display market is projected to reach the market revenue worth US$3.89 bln by 2020. The total revenue of the global flexible display market is expected to grow at an estimated CAGR of 43.1% from 2014 to 2020, as per MarketsandMarkets. OLED display market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2014 to 2020. In terms of the application segment, smartphone application sector will account for the largest market revenue with highest CAGR of 149.3%, from 2014 to 2020. Asia-Pacific and ROW are likely to grow at the highest CAGR by geographical segment. The market of consumer electronics display products is booming currently, and is expected to grow further, with the advancements in the display technologies. Products such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, and TVs are garnering a very high demand from the consumers' perspective. There are various materials, components, technologies that are used in the display panels, which contribute to the diverse features of the display, such as defining the display's resolution, feasibility, resistance to temperature and moisture, aspect ratio, thickness, and the likes. The report describes the components, materials, application, technology and geography market in the flexible display industry.

The last decade has witnessed a well-paced transformation in the flexible display technology market. Displays have evolved from CRT to plasma display (PDP) and from PDP to LCD, LED. The latest display type is OLED. In 2014, the flexible display Smartphones are expected to hit the market with tablets to follow soon after. Laptops and TVs are also expected to follow the trend of smartphones and tablets while OLED based televisions have also been following the same trend, by electronics manufacturing giants Samsung and LG. All these developments have created demand for better and more stable materials to be used in these displays. The use of IGZO (Indium gallium Zinc oxide) and photonic crystals are the examples of the stable materials that are used in the above mentioned displays. The characteristics and features of some emerging displays are flexible, roll able and bendable displays. They are acting as the biggest drivers in the dielectric materials market. This emerging display market possesses some of the unique, distinct features such as sleekness, reliability/flexibility, and ruggedness; and thus, these displays can be utilized in most of the industries. The flexible display market is segmented into five categories that include: material, component, technology, application, and geography. This report divides the overall market into four major geographical segments, namely: North America, Europe, APAC, and ROW. APAC contributes more in terms of flexible display market when compared to the other geographies. The demand for the display materials is mainly from APAC region; in addition to this most of the demand also comes, from China and Japan. The major companies in display materials market are Atmel Corporation (U.S.), AU Optronics (Taiwan), Corning Inc. (U.S.), Delta Electronics (Taiwan), DuPont Display (U.S.), E-Ink Holdings (Taiwan), Flexible display Center (U.S.), HP Company, Kent Displays, Inc. (U.S.), LG Displays (South Korea), NanoLumes (U.S.), Nokia (Finland), Philips Electronics (the Netherlands), Polymer Vision (the Netherlands ), Samsung (South Korea), SiPix Imaging (U.S.), Sony Corporation (Japan), Universal Display Corporation (U.S.), Visionox (China) and Plastic Logic Ltd. (U.K.).
The display industry has developed towards in realizing large-screen and high quality image so far. But in the future, the development directions would go toward the reasonably priced flexible displays. Flexible displays are lighter, thinner, and unbreakable, compared to the existing glass substrate using displays. With such traits, flexible displays are expected to replace the existing market that the conventional displays could not enter due to the limits in application, and to enter new markets. IHS Electronics & Media (E&M) recently published a report. According to the report, the flexible display market will grow to US$1.3 bln in 2016, and then continuously make a rapid growth to US$67.7 bln by 2023, accounting for about 20% of the total flat display market. Shipments of flexible displays will amount to 24 mln units in 2016, and the figure is expected to expand to 1.8 bln by 2023, making up about 25% of the total flat display market. The flexible display market will not only replace the existing display market, but also create markets for new kinds of display applications, driving the growth of the display market. The report forecasts that the substitute market will amount to US$900 mln in 2016 and hike to US$32.8 bln by 2023, while the new market will total US$400 mln in 2016 to US$34.9 bln by 2023.

As per ASD Reports, the global flexible display applications market is expected to reach US$3,298 mln by 2017 at an estimated CAGR of 45.1% from 2012 to 2017. Americas lead the overall flexible display market, with U.S. contributing for the largest percentage share. Europe, APAC, and Rest of the world (ROW) follow it. In the present scenario, the market for flexible e-paper display is already established; and used in areas like retail signage, Point of Purchase display (POP), Electronic Shelf Labeling (ESL), smartcard and wearable display, etc. The other flexible display technologies like OLED and LCD are still in the introductory phase. Companies like Sony (Japan), LG (South Korea), and Philips (The Netherlands), etc. have already developed display based on OLED. Samsung (South Korea) is expected to come up with flexible OLED smartphone by the end of 2012. Flexible display has promising applications such as eReader, smartphone, tablet, laptop, e-paper, and TV. Flexible display majorly targets the consumer products such as mobile, TV, laptop, etc. In addition, the consumer goods market is growing significantly and expected to grow further at a same pace. Hence, flexible display will have a huge scope in future. Flexible OLED display is expected to be the most popular display technology for most of the applications and continue to remain the same in future. Driving factors for flexible display market are distinctive features of display and growing consumer goods industry. There are certain restraints for this market as well; such as rising competing technologies like OLED, LCD display, and design challenges.