Bendable Smartphones Aren't Coming Anytime Soon

Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Round smartphone retails in Korea for about $1,000. It's that expensive for a reason.

The curved display has graduated from science fiction to store shelves, but manufacturing them is still a challenging and expensive process. Screen makers are struggling to figure out the techniques needed to produce millions of the screens cheaply.

As for phones you can bend or fold? Don't hold your breath.

Mass-produced mobile devices with flexible — and eventually, foldable — screens may be as far as a decade away, according to Max McDaniel, chief marketing officer of Applied Materials's display business group. He showed Bloomberg firsthand some of the complexities involved on a recent tour of an R&D lab at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, the world's largest maker of the machinery used to produce displays. Read more...