14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has been doing its best to develop and finalize its flexible OLED display technology, hoping to have it ready for commercial availability by year's end.
That would suggest that bendable, foldable or rollable gadgets, like phones and e-readers, could be up for sale in 2014-2015.
Sadly, the company has stumbled over a problem, one that might endanger its planned time line.
While the plastic substrate technology is coming along nicely (it was the biggest technological obstacle at one time), an upgrade to the encapsulation technology has researchers stumped.
Based on a patent bought from US company Vitex system back in late 2011, encapsulation protects OLEDs from moisture and oxygen.
Samsung just hasn't managed to come up with an encapsulation process that doesn't take ages to complete.
The corporation believes it might be able to shorten the encapsulation process to under 2 minutes, but we'll have to wait and see if it succeeds.