High brightness LED solid-state lighting products will become the new darling of the market

Enjoys one of the important advantages of the prestigious LED is a very long service life -- in some applications in solid-state lighting market, its life is much longer than incandescent or fluorescent lamp life. 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 exacerbate 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, the solid-state lighting market continues to grow, but the growth rate has slowed down compared with the past. Analysts Strategi esUn-limited and iSuppli recently released report predicts that in the next few years the market's annual growth rate of 10%-15%. And since 1995, compared with the high brightness LED products have been proud of the annual growth rate of 46%, and now 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 will not lead a gay life" "don't let them".

High brightness LED is actually in the middle of the three division of the solid-state lighting market observers. Standard flashing LED dynamic flash characteristics make it become more and more equipment embellishment. For example, the power indicator light and the hard disk drive indicator light for the desktop computer and notebook computer. 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 the only product 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 iSuppl I report, in 2004 the total sales of high brightness LED reached $2 billion 700 million.

However, the high brightness LED Moisture Day is coming to an end, in part because of weak demand in the mobile phone market. Analysts pointed out that the growth of the mobile phone market is slowing, this year's growth rate has dropped from 17% to 6%. "There is a growing trend in the use of LED in the automotive market, but even if the manufacturer is able to sell more LED per vehicle, the difference in the total amount is huge," he said. "Every year, 700 million mobile phone market and the annual market share of the car market is far from sales of LED," said Rebel-lo. Competition is further intensified. Japan's Nichia and ToyodaGosei, the United States 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 selling price of LED fell by 15% per year. 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 (about $1 billion 200 million) to overcome this project.

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, the Department as part of the semiconductor product group to sell to its partners KohlbergKravisRoberts and Silver Lake. Soon after, Epistar and UnitedEpitaxy (UEC), the two largest LED manufacturers in Taiwan,, announced plans to merge the LED as the key driver of the new consortium. Re-bello 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 e (Nichia, Cre, ToyodaGosei, Os-ram and so on), which has an important ultra high brightness (UHB) expertise. 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. "The use of 9 discrete light source, can be independent of the brightness of the control, you can focus on the beam, and the brightness multiplied. "Rebello says. However, he adds, there are many technical challenges. "UHBLED gives off a lot of heat, which puts forward higher requirements for heat dissipation. In addition, UHBLED is still very expensive. "Not to mention the products that are still in the laboratory and have not been able to produce enough light.