The Korea Times posted an interesting interview with Brian Daniels, senior VP from Merck's performance materials-advanced technologies division. Brian says that Samsung is committed to OLED panels - and will return to the OLED TV market by 2017.
Merck says that improvement in OLED materials will enable cost reductions which will enable OLED TVs to reach large production volumes in three years.
Merck further believes that inkjet printing will offer several advantages over current evaporation-based OLED production methods - and will be more cost-effective. Merck is currently supplying OLED materials to LG and they are also collaborating on inkjet printing research. Brian ruled out the option of an OLED joint-venture with LGD, though.
Samsung released their first OLED TV, the KN55S9C, back in June 2013. The TV was available worldwide for a short time for around $10,000, and then dropped to around $6,000 (and even lower) - but Samsung soon stopped production and never released another TV. Samsung officials repeatedly said that Samsung will not resume OLED TV production until 2016 or 2017, which coincides with Merck's estimates.
In the past months we heard reports that Samsung decided to re-enter the OLED TV market - and some reports even suggested that Samsung aims to use LG's WRGB architecture. Samsung Display official stance is that it has no plans to re-enter the OLED TV market in the near future as "OLED TVs are not in sight for the time being".
