Toshiba Corp. said Wednesday it has developed the world's first full-color polymer organic light emitting display, paving the way for more energy-saving compact displays for use in mobile electronics tools.

The 7.2-cm display supports 260,000 colors, enabled by a common international format known as Q-CIF, Toshiba said.

The new display was developed with new technology that forms a light-emitting polymer film on a low-temperature polysilicon thin-film transistor array, Toshiba said.

The displays use an organic light-emitting diode in the pixels formed on a thin-film transistor array. The display itself emits light and has no need for the backlight required by liquid crystal displays, opening the way to thinner, lighter display panels that consume less power.