The Wall Street Journal reports that both Doosan and Samsung's Cheil Industries are considering to acquire Novaled. Two weeks ago we reported that Doosan wants to buy Novaled for $270-360 million, but now it seems that Samsung is also interested in the German OLED material maker.

The report suggests that Cheil hasn't yet decided to submit a bid, and may actually only offer to buy a stake in Novaled. Samsung is already a shareholder in Novaled. A year ago Novaled announced plans for an IPO on the NASDAQ with an aim to raise $200 million.

Korea Investment & Securities produced an interesting investment report about the Korean and Taiwanese AMOLED industry. They focus on material and equipment suppliers. Basically they say that large OLED panels will be produced soon (by 2013 or 2014 at the latest) by both Samsung and LG, and they try to identify which companies will benefit from this OLED market expansion. They say that both LG and Samsung will eventually convert their lines to Oxide-TFTs.

Strangely they do not even mention Universal Display and Novaled - which are both major material suppliers to Samsung and LG - even though they do list a lot of "foreign" material suppliers such as Dow Chemical, Idemitsu Kosan, Merck and even Kodak (which is no longer into OLEDs...). In their analysis for Duksan, for example, they do not mention the fact that the green material is now supplied by Universal - which should reduce the company's revenue from OLEDs... So we do not vouch for this report...

A few weeks ago we reported that Samsung's Cheil Industries will invest 100 billion won (about $92 million) and build an OLED material facility in Kumi, Korea. Now we hear reports that the company indeed announced plans for an OLED material production line, but total investment will be 19.9 billion won (about $18 USD million).

Cheil Industries plans to produce Electron Transport Layer (ETL), Hole Transport Layer (HTL) and Organic Insulator (PDL) materials for AMOLED displays. About $9.7 million will go into the ETL and HTL facilities, and the rest ($8.3 million) will be used to build the PDL production line. Cheil plans to supply materials for Samsung Mobile Display in the second half of 2011.

Samsung's Cheil Industries announced a plan to invest 100 billion won (about $92 million) and build an OLED material facility in Kumi, Korea. The company will start supplying materials in Q3 2011 and is already in talks with a customer (that will use these in small & medium displays). Cheil plans to produce ETL, HTL and EML materials.