Samsung Electronics said it will introduce a smartphone with a curved display in October, as the world's top handset maker seeks to set the pace of hardware innovation and maintain its supremacy in a fiercely competitive business.

Curved displays are an early stage in screen evolution which is shifting to bendable or foldable designs, eventually allowing mobile and wearable gadgets to take on new forms that could radically change the high-end smartphone market.

"We plan to introduce a smartphone with a curved display in South Korea in October," Samsung's mobile business head of strategic marketing DJ Lee said today at an event launching the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone in Seoul.

In January Samsung, which has taken over from Apple as the global smartphone leader, showed off prototype products with a flexible screen and a display that extends from the side of a device.

But technology firms have yet to figure out how to mass produce the parts cheaply and come up with display panels that can be as thin as a sheet and highly heat resistant.

Curved display is already commercially available in large-screen televisions.

Samsung and its home rival LG Electronics had started selling curved OLED TV sets this year priced at about $9,000.