The Korea Times posted an interesting interview with Merck's OLED unit VP, Dr. Udo Heider. Udo is 'pretty confident' that Samsung will soon start producing OLED TVs again.
In the past few weeks we heard several conflicting reports on Samsung's OLED TV program. Some say they will abandon OLEDs completely (and go for QLED TVs instead), while other reports say that Samsung will soon re-enter the OLED TV market. Last year Merck stated that Quantum Dot based TVs, unlike OLEDs, are no game changer.
Dr. Udo says that OLED makers should focus on costs, yields and productivity. He says that one of the reasons he believe Samsung will start making large OLED panels is that prices of key OLED raw materials have been falling lately. Processes based on printing technologies are also promising as they may enable lower production costs.
Merck is very committed to OLED technology - and the company is partnering with LG Display on OLED TVs, and Udo feels that LG Display is also "very committed to OLED technology"
The article, though, has several inaccuracies. For example they say that Merck acquired Epson (which is not true - but they are collaborating on OLED printing) and that 2.1 million OLED TVs will ship in 2015 (in fact only about 600,000 units will be sold, at best).
