Today, TheLec reported that the South Korean LG Display will start supplying 17-inch foldable notebook OLED panels to Hewlett-Packard (HP) later this year. However, this is not the first time, that this company is making and supplying foldable notebook OLED panels. Back in 2020, LG Display was the main supplier of such displays for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold.
Foldable OLED Panels Sent To HP
Anyway, the new foldable notebook OLED panel made for HP will be 17 inches in size turning into an 11-inch display when folded. As for the folding method, it uses inward folding and has a 4K (3840×2160) resolution.
LG Display is reported to commence mass production of the panel in Q3. According to the initial plan, it will produce up to 10,000 units of the panel.
If you remember, LG Display demonstrated a 17-inch foldable panel at CES earlier this year. At the show, the company revealed that the new panels support touch operations as well as and stylus. These panels have been specifically made for notebooks, tablets, and monitors.
Getting back to the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold and its OLED panel, it was 13.3 inches in size turning into 6.2 inches when folded. However, it had a lower resolution of 2048×1536. For this model, LG Display had supplied around 20,000 units of the panel.
Foldable Apple Laptops Coming As Well
Today, we also learned that the company will supply foldable OLED panels to Apple. These panels are made for tablets and notebooks and come with ultra-thin glass as the cover window instead of polyimide.
In fact, we heard the first news concerning the foldable Apple laptops back in February. Later, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman said that there could appear a new product, a MacBook/iPad hybrid, coming with a touchscreen keyboard.
Though there have been various reports saying this foldable MacBook/iPad wouldn’t hit the stores until 2025, today, we learned that LG Display is already supplying the new panels. We understand that the words LG is “collaborating with Apple” don’t mean the production has begun. But it means that the product is in its early stage.
Apple is not in a hurry to release a foldable smartphone. But there are more and more news proving that the Cupertino-based company will enter this niche soon.
We hear there is interest at the largest size yet, around 20.x”. This size could create a new category for Apple and would result in a true dual use product, a notebook with a full-size keyboard when folded and for use as a monitor when not folded and used with an external keyboard. It may also allow for UHD/4K resolution or even higher at that size. The time frame is likely later than 2025 though, it could be 2026 or 2027.
