Merck has signed a cooperation and licensing agreement with Seiko Epson. According to the agreement, Epson will supply Merck with ink technology that dissolves Merck's soluble OLED materials so that they can be used for the production of printable OLED displays. This brings Merck closer to providing production-ready OLED printing materials.

The two companies will also continue their close cooperation to create a strong ink-formulation roadmap in order for Merck to commercialize and address current and future requirements of the OLED TV industry, including the creation of industry-standard inks for manufacturing OLED TVs using inkjet technology.

ETNews reports that Samsung decided to postpone its flexible OLED production to 2013, and will use those pilot lines to produce regular glass-based OLEDs. Samsung has to delay flexible OLEDs because of technical issues (low uniformity and slow encapsulation) - but also because they need more OLED capacity because of high demand for larger AMOLED displays.

Samsung Display can currently produce 56,000 5.5-Gen (1300x1500 mmm) glass substrates a month. The pilot lines used for flexible OLED development can produce 8,000 more substrates monthly, bringing the total to 64,000.

Motorola's RAZR i is now shipping - unlocked for $534. The RAZR i is an Android (v4.0) smartphone that's based on intel's Medfield Atom processor clocked at 2Ghz (single core with hyperthreading). Other features include 1Gb RAM, 8GB of internal memory, microSD slot, 8MP camera and an edge-to-edge 4.3" qHD (960x540) Super AMOLED Advanced display.

UBI Research published a new report on Flexible OLED displays, forecasting a very fast growth: from 20 million units in 2012 to 150 million units in 2013. UBI sees $6.3 billion in flexible OLED revenues in 2017. This is far more optimistic than the recent report by Markets&Markets who see the entire flexible display market at $3.2 billion in 2017.

Samsung has plans to release their first plastic-based flexible OLEDs in 2012 (although this may be delayed into 2013). LG Display hopes to start flexible OLED production towards the end of 2013. Personally I do not think both companies will have capacity enough to produce 130 million flexible panels in 2013.

AT&T announced that they will start shipping the Galaxy Note 2 on November 9 - for $299.99 with a two-year contract. Pre-orders will start tomorrow (October 25). The Note II is the successor to the popular "Phablet" Galaxy Note. This large phone/tablet has a 5.5" HD Super AMOLED display (1280x720, non-Pentile), a quad-core 1.6Ghz processor and a large 3,100mAh battery. The Note II is only 9.4mm thick.

The Note 2 uses a unique RGB sub-pixel scheme (@267 PPI) - not Pentile, but also not a classic RGB strip. It may be that the Note 2 uses Ignis' AdMo-p technology.

Back in 2009 we launched our OLED Twitter account (which sends out daily OLED news and updates). Today we reached a thousand followers - a nice milestone, even though Twitter doesn't seem to be very popular by our readers (just to compare, our newsletter has over 11,000 subscribers and our Facebook page has over 1,500 fans).

So - if you have a Twitter account, follow us to get the latest OLED news. Why not...

Korean site MK news reports that Samsung have plans to produce Full-HD AMOLED panels in the first half of 2012. These panels will feature a pixel density of 400 ppi or even more. Just to compare, the highest PPI AMOLED ever made is the one used in Samsung's own Galaxy Nexus (316 ppi: 4.65", 1280x720, with PenTile technology). The S3 has 306 ppi( 4.8" 1280x720, PenTile) and the Note II has only 267 ppi, 5.5" 1280x720 - but without PenTile.

Back in July it was reported that Samsung managed to reach 350 ppi using FMM (Fine Metal Mask) technology. Perhaps they are getting close to commercialize this specific technology (and also increase the resolution even further to 400 ppi).

Korea Times posted an article in which they say that both Samsung and LG won't be able to start producing OLED TVs in 2012 - as both company are facing technical issues and very low yields. Both companies intended to launch the OLED TVs in time for the Olympic games in London (August 2012) - but obviously they failed to do so. Last month Digitimes reported that LG won't be able to launch in 2012, and now we hear that Samsung won't start producing either.

The article actually says that DisplaySearch expects the companies to start producing TVs in 2012 - but only a handful. 500 units, in fact - that's hardly mass production. In July, DisplaySearch estimated that the two companies will sell 20,000 units in 2012 - which is also a very low amount.

Nanomarkets released a new OLED lighting material report (OLED Lighting Materials Market Forecast 2013) in which they forecast that the OLED lighting materials market will surpass $1.3 billion in revenues in 2018, as OLED lighting moved beyond luxury luminaires and designer kits and into larger, general illumination applications. They say that the market value of functional OLED materials (emitters, hosts, blocking/transport/injection materials) will grow from $1.7 million in 2012 to over $1.1 billion in 2019.

Other key findings from this report:

According to a new report by Markets&Markets the global flexible display market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45% over the next five years to reach over $3.2 billion by 2017.

Market&Markets discuss several flexible display technologies such as LCD, LCoS, e-paper and OLED. They say that flexible OLEDs are the most advanced kind of displays and are considered to be the future mainstream display for a number of consumer products.