High brightness LED become the darling of the current lighting market

One of the most important advantages of LED in the solid state lighting market is that it has a very long life - in some applications, it is much longer than the life of incandescent or fluorescent lamps. However, in the field of high technology, nothing will decline faster than the rate of decline in profit margins. LED products after several years of rapid growth, high brightness LED has become the darling of the solid state lighting market. As a new entrant, it drives the average price of LED lighting products fell, but also exacerbated the elimination rate of old products - industry experts predict that LED demand is weakening. In contrast, solid-state lighting industry is looking for new applications in the field of solid state lighting, small manufacturers are also seeking to restructure to form economies of scale. In fact, solid state lighting market continues to grow, but the growth rate has slowed down compared with the past. Analysts Strategies Unlimited and iSuppli recently released report predicts that in the next few years the market's annual growth rate of 10% ~ 15%. Strategies Unlimited believes that, compared with the high brightness LED products from 1995 has been proud of the annual growth rate of 46% compared to this figure does reduce the number of. Moreover, LED is considered will eventually be able to rule the automotive and general lighting market, and these markets mature may also need to spend a few years, however, have been identified in the price space, R & D competition will obviously be very fierce. The next few years for solid-state lighting market, I will not let the industry but also won't let them lead a gay life, hungry. High brightness LED is actually in the middle of the three division of the solid-state lighting market observers. The dynamic flash characteristics of standard LED make it become more and more equipment, such as the power indicator and hard disk drive indicator for computer and notebook. The price of less than $5 also led to the use of standard light-emitting diodes, these applications have a considerable market share, the annual market value of about $2 billion. Compared with the standard light-emitting LED, high brightness LED is something that has emerged in recent years. Although the price is more expensive than incandescent and fluorescent lamps, but their durability and life are far above incandescent and fluorescent lamps, these features make the high brightness LED suitable for many fields. For example, driving lights, brake lights and turn lights for automobiles. Over the past two years, they have also been widely used in mobile phone keypad background lights and displays, as well as the popular camera phone flash. According to iSuppli report, in 2004 the total sales of high brightness LED reached $2 billion 700 million. "But the days of high brightness LED moisture is coming to an end, part of the reason is that the mobile phone market demand," said iSuppli analyst Jagdish Rebello pointed out that "mobile phone market growth is slowing, growth this year has dropped from 17% to 6%." LED applications in the automotive market tend to grow, but even if the manufacturer can sell more LED in each car, the difference in the total is still very large. "Every year, 700 million mobile phone market and the annual market share of the car market is far from sales of LED," said Rebello. Competition is further intensified. Japan's Nichia and Toyoda Gosei, the U.S. Cree and European Osram have ruled the LED market. But since 2003, Taiwan, South Korea and Mainland China suppliers began to enter the market, prompting the average sales price of LED fell 15%%. China's competitors are likely to become more important in the next few years: in June 2004, the Chinese government announced a national project on the development of semiconductor lighting devices. China plans to invest 10 billion yuan (US $1 billion 200 million) to fight the project, according to China's people's daily. These have prompted the LED market through merger or reorganization of the way to the economies of scale. August 2005, Agilent stripped the LED manufacturing sector, will be part of the semiconductor industry as a group of products sold to its partners Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake. Shortly thereafter, the two largest LED manufacturers in Taiwan, China, Epistar and United Epitaxy (UEC) announced a merger plan named Epistar, LED dimensions and product performance as the key to the success of the new consortium. Rebello believes that the decline in prices will lead to the acquisition of Agilent chip business, the company will eventually part of this business to the existing LED manufacturers in the far east." Other companies are bringing new technologies. Agilent sold its stake in LED lighting joint venture Lumileds to its partner PHILPS. Lumileds is one of the few companies that have an important Nichia (UHB, Cree, Toyoda, Osram and so on), which has important ultra high brightness technology. UHB technology to achieve brightness is 100 times higher than the brightness of the LED can be achieved, and ultimately will be in the car headlights to all areas of indoor and outdoor lighting with incandescent and fluorescent lighting competition. For example, compared with the existing incandescent lamp, a 9 UHB lamp headlights need less energy, and allows the beam modulation, which is impossible to achieve incandescent lamp. "Using 9 discrete light sources, you can control the intensity of the light independently, allowing the beam to focus and increase the brightness," Rebello said. However, he adds, there are many technical challenges. "UHB LED emits a lot of heat, which puts forward higher requirements for heat dissipation, in addition, UHB LED is still very expensive." Not to mention those who are still in the laboratory