SAN JOSE, Calif. — Samsung grabbed world headlines on Wednesday when it announced plans to ship a foldable smartphone sometime next year. But a little-known rival was actually first to announce such a product a few weeks ago and aims to beat the South Korean giant again by shipping it in December.
Startup Royole started ramping a Gen6 fab for flexible displays at its Shenzhen headquarters in June. Its whopping $1.7 billion in private financing and staff of 2,000+ is matched by its outsized ambitions to become a conglomerate like Samsung selling both leading-edge displays and consumer devices that use them.
Royole’s FlexPai tablet is based on its 7.8-inch AMOLED display that folds into the size of a smartphone. The flexible display is in pilot production in a 1.1 million-square-foot fab that will ultimately be able to produce a million 8-inch panels a month.
