“Bloomberg reports Apple will launch two larger screen phones next year but the more significant aspect of the report is the likelihood of an iPhone with a curved scree,” Haydn Shaughnessy writes for Forbes. “The Wall St Journal picked up on it too – it means, most likely, that Apple will be transferring its screen technologies from LCD to OLED (organic light emitting diode).”
“The bigger story, however, is the loss of OLED technologies to the US economy. OLED is essentially a US technology baked in the labs of Kodak. You can read the Wikipedia entry here and my account of it here. The desire to create and build flat panel displays in the US goes back to the 195os. Much of the technology was developed in the Kodak labs during the 1970s and 1980s,” Shaughnessy writes. “But Kodak overpriced the licenses for its florescent OLED technologies and set off a scramble for patent workarounds. Samsung joined in both parties (licensing from Kodak and looking for ways round those licenses). It set off on a ten year odyssey to make OLED work at scale and to promote alternatives to Kodak’s patents.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple developing two iPhones with bigger 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch curved displays for Q314 – November 10, 2013