LG Display unveils 0.97 mm thick OLED panel

And that's 55-inch for ya. South Korean flat panel maker LG Display Co. showcased on Tuesday a detachable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel that sticks to the wall, renewing its pledge to focus on the high-end display as a future growth engine.

he 55-inch wallpaper OLED panel, presented as one of the company's future displays at a media event, is only 0.97 mm thick, weighs 1.9 kg and can easily be stuck to a wall with a magnetic mat, or removed from it.

The new product is far slimmer compared with LG Display's existing flagship 55-inch OLED panel that is 4.3 mm thick. ▲

LG Display also showcased a convex OLED panel that is mainly used for digital signage for large-scale outdoor advertising.

The display panel maker has pushed for production of the OLED as its next growth driver. The advanced display helps make a TV much slimmer and lighter since it emits light itself based on the electric current without a backlight unit, unlike the liquid crystal display (LCD).

Yeo Sang-deog, the head of LG Display's OLED division, vowed to ramp up OLED production from the third quarter of this year to a substantial level that can meet clients' demand.

"We should be able to supply a satisfactory volume to our clients from July or August, which means we're hoping to buckle down production as well as promotion from the third quarter," he told reporters at a press conference held after the event.

Yeo, however, declined to elaborate further on which clients have shown interest in LG Display's OLED panels, other than its affiliate LG Electronics, to whom it sells a bulk of its products.

LG Display retained this year's sales target for OLED panels at 600,000 units and 1.5 million units for 2016. Yeo cited the improvement in yields for OLED panels as a key factor that will help achieve such a sales target.

"It has taken a year and half for us to raise the yield to this level (for OLEDs), while it'd taken nearly 10 years to achieve the yield for LCDs," he said.

LG Display will keep its focus on large screens, with a plan to introduce an OLED panel as big as 99 inches within this year, the executive said. The company has released its 55-inch, 66-inch and 77-inch OLED models earlier in the year.

It will also continue to upgrade its plastic OLED technology in the small- to mid-sized segments, such as transparent displays and rollable and flexible displays to be used for wearable devices or vehicle dashboards, according to Yeo.