Samsung to Buy Germany’s Novaled
South Korea’s Samsung Group, through its affiliates, clinched a deal Friday to buy German lighting specialist Novaled AG for 260 million euros ($347 million), in a move highlighting the conglomerate’s ambition to expand in next-generation technologies.
Samsung has been on an acquisition spree, snapping up small companies with technologies used in consumer electronics. The latest deal will help the group secure a better foothold in the market for next-generation displays employing organic light-emitting diodes. OLED displays are now used widely in smartphones but are also increasingly being adopted in televisions for their energy efficiency and ability to reproduce vivid colors. Revenue in the OLED display market is poised to grow to $20 billion by 2017 from just $8 billion in 2012, according to market research firm DisplaySearch.