In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million. Synos' FAST-ALD encapsulation technology is aimed towards flexible OLED displays. Back then Veeco said that the company's first FAST-ALD pilot production system has already been installed, and they expect a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014.
Yesterday Veeco reported their financial results for Q4 2013 (which was a challenging year for Veeco). The company said that they "received a purchase order from the world leader in mobile OLED displays for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system". The world's leader in mobile OLEDs is certainly Samsung Display (as they currently hold a market share of over 95%).
This system is a larger, scaled-up version of the previous R&D system that they shipped to Samsung. Veeco does not know whether this system will be used for R&D or real production. In any case they do say that they aim to replace the current encapsulation technology (Vitex) used by Samsung as the ALD performs better.
Indeed back in September, financial services firm Wedbush estimated that Synos has been working with Samsung since 2011, and Wedbush estimated that product shipments to Samsung will begin in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014.
Samsung is currently producing 5.7" Full-HD flexible OLED displays, but in a very low capacity. Samsung's current encapsulation technology is Vitex's multi-layer technology which is slow and expensive. While it was reported that Samsung is busy upgrading this technology, we also know that they are testing alternatives, such as UDC's single-layer techonology.
