日期：2012年5月11日

Chinese LED manufacturers contend in Japanese LED lighting market (2)

Watanabe Yasushi from Japan JET Lighting Department has a different point of view. “After the earthquake happened in March last year, more and more Chinese products swarmed into Japanese market. Within several sampling inspections, we found that many Chinese LED bulbs cannot work as long as 50000 hours as marked. Most of them had the same problems: power suppliers and overheat.” Watanabe Yasushi indicated that more than 50% LED products from China is unqualified due to their unfamiliar with Japanese LED lighting standard.

 

Watanabe Yasushi from Japan JET Lighting Department has a different point of view. “After the earthquake happened in March last year, more and more Chinese products swarmed into Japanese market.

 

At the same time, Chinese LED manufacturers suffered fierce competitions from local LED manufacturers. Panasonic, the largest lighting enterprise in Japan, decided to promote a restructuring plan: combined Panasonic Lighting (a sub-company of Panasonic) with its Lighting Department together as a giant Lighting Business Group. Panasonic indicated that, after this reconstruction, the annual sales of 2012 are expected to reach up to 35 billion yen. The annual sales of 2015 can reach up to 100 billion yen. In which LED products will occupied more than 40% of Japanese local lighting market.

 

Meanwhile, another local brand Toshiba is stepping up the penetration in Japanese LED bulb market. Sato Koji, director of LED Business Department of Toshiba indicated that the increase of LED month sales is significant in 2011, from 2.8 million in June to 4.8 million in December. The annual growth is over 300%.

 

Competitions from local brand brought huge pressure to Chinese LED manufacturers. “Japanese have the traditional channels for sales. But it is very difficult for Chinese manufacturers to get into. Even for ordinary LED lights, we can only import our products though an exclusive agency set in Japan firstly, then transfer them into traditional channels. We are planning to be the OEM for Japanese local LED brands, this is another way to enter Japanese lighting market.” said Jiawei Pang, general manager from Tong Pu technologies Co,. Ltd.

 

General manager Mr Xiao from Shengzhen Juzuo Industrial Co., Ltd. has studied Japanese market for many years. According to his words, it is impractical for Chinese LED High Bay products promiscuously enter Japanese market. “Our manufacturers need to do sufficient research before entering Japanese market, choose several flagship products according to the specific conditions of it.”

Chinese LED manufacturers contend in Japanese LED lighting market (1)

In recent years, more and more Chinese LED manufacturers entered into Japanese LED lighting market by the way of strategic co-operation. Nichia, Sharp, Toyoda Gosei, Showa Denko KK, etc. Many Japanese chip manufacturers co-operated with Chinese enterprises or expressed willingness to co-operate with Chinese enterprises.

 

In recent years, more and more Chinese LED manufacturers entered into Japanese LED lighting market by the way of strategic co-operation.

 

LED enjoyed a rapid development in Japan in past few years. According to Japanese local statistics, annual sale of LED bulbs within Japan is more than 31 million, 40% higher than last year. In addition, many appliance stores in Japan began to set their own LED special counter for customers. The high demand of LED products in Japanese market makes themselves become the “hot cake” for foreign LED enterprises. Chinese LED manufacturers have seen Japanese LED marketing as the main development target.

 

Those who are prepared to enter this “overseas battle field” indicated that LED patent is a threshold and the standard is a pass. “If we want to enter Japanese LED lighting market, we have to overcome these two difficulties. It is very hard for medium and small-sized LED companies” Said Chen Zheng, CEO of Shenzheng Dingxi lighting technologies Co., Ltd. However, those who have already entered the Japanese LED lighting market complained that they start flimsy. “The present situation is not as good as we though. We suffered a lot of fierce competitions from local LED Projects companies. Meanwhile, we have to face with restrictions from patents.” Said one officer of Shenzhen Mason Technologies Co., Ltd.

 

At the same time, entering Japanese LED market is more and more difficult for Chinese LED manufacturers. “It seems that they don’t want to share this cake with us. The requirements for entering this market is much more strict than last year” Said Chen Zheng. Recently, Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Department announced a new regulation (will be executed in 1st July, 2012) for foreign LED manufacturers: only those LED products which owned EPS certificate can be imported into Japan. EPS certification has very strict requests not only for product quality and production tests, but also for their factories’ equipments and management. Most LED manufacturers can pass though EPS certificate in their products but fail in their factories’ examination.

Japanese lighting manufacturers quietly lift the led production lights capacity of a price war competition

LED production lights capacity competition is oversupply concerns in 2011, Taiwan plant with large international companies competition will be intense. Global LED industry will enter the forces of growth and decline of the transition period.

With the Japan LED lighting industry raising of price competition, usher LED lighting into the take-off year.  South Korea, mainland industry are also menacing, driving regional industrial competition, and promoting Taiwan LED enterprises accelerate lighting applications layout.

Japanese lighting manufacturers quietly lift the led production lights capacity of a price war competition

With the intensity of Market price competition, under the usher of Japan government, including Toshiba, Panasonic and  first-tier manufacturers such as LED bulbs 50/50 cut, Taiwan-based LED industry estimates that with the trend of cost deduction，LED bulbs prices will steadily go down in 2011,  Large-size LCD backlight and LED lighting as a twin-engine in 2011 growth momentum. The LED industry estimates that LED lighting penetration is about 3% compared with 2010, , the 2011 led production lights penetration rate is expected to reach 6 to 10 percent.

We can guess South Korea LED Street Light output will continue to grow with the next two years,  and LED packaging market share is expected to increase to 24-25%. Taiwan LED packaging market share will be in the same position. Compared with the various regions of the world and the module output, Japanese manufacturers market share is about 31%, top to the first grade, while Taiwan and South Korea were up to 2 percent, European and the United States each accounted for about 10%. Among them, South Korea industry market share in 2009 is only about 10%, but it quickly jump to 20 percent within one year. It kept pace with led production lights industry.

Due to the capacity utilization is still low in Korean LED plant, a marked slowdown in the expansion progress from the secondhalf year in 2010. But the Taiwan plant is benefit from the huge demand for TV backlighting in Korea Factory and upgrade to Taiwan LED purchase amount, which promote the growth of LED production capacity. However, mainland China LED High Bay industry is hard to catch up. The upstream MOCVD machine units may be open out a large number in the second half of 2011. The LED production lights industry worries that once South Korea LED plant technology enhanced, mainland industry production capacity can also be heavy growth. 2011 terrorist will set off oversupply of capacity competition, LED marketing will enter price competition. The price declined in fear of more than 30%. Regional industrial competition is heating up.

Advantages of LED lighting source

LED lighting market is strengthened continuously. traditional lights have been replaced regularly by various LED lighting products. In the next section, we are going to give out several advantages of LED lamps that bring them to a leading position in lighting market.

 

LED lighting market is strengthened continuously. traditional lights have been replaced regularly by various LED lighting products.

 

Higher energy saving: LED lighting source uses DC diver. Single component’s power consumption is just 0.03W-0.06W. The electrical to optical conversion efficiency can approximately be up to 100%. LED lamps can sever more than 80% energy compare with traditional lamps with the same luminous flux.

 

Longer working life: some people name LED lamps as ever lighting lamps. Of course, it is an exaggerated metaphor. But LED lamps do have much longer life than traditional lamps (theoretically, more than 50000 hours). LED lamps use solid lighting source, packaged by epoxy resin. The entire lamp body tightly encapsulated, with no gap.

 

Multi-color: LED lighting source can utilize the various combinations of three primary colors (red/blue/green) to create multiple colors. Currently, only 16 types of colors can be sent out by LED lamps. However, this part of LED technique still need to be developed. Technicians believe that, in near future, LED lighting source can emit 256 real colors with the help of computers.

 

More environmental friendly: There are no ultraviolet rays (radiation) and infrared rays (heat) in LED lights. Every part of LED lamps can be recycled. There are no pollutants and toxic chemicals. LED lamps use solid lighting sources, can be touched, no human-hazard substances.

 

More sophisticated: compare with traditional lights, LED lighting source is a kind of low voltage microelectronic devices, successfully combined computer science, telecommunication technology, image processing, embedded control system, etc. Thus, it is a digital product, and also a semiconductor optoelectronic device. LED lighting technology has properties of online programming, infinite update and flexibility.

 

With the rapid development of LED lighting industry, its occupation of lighting market will continuously increased in next few years. Also with the enhancement of people’s environmental awareness, countries all over the world start to execute all kinds of environment protection plans. LED lamp is the first step for our green life. A further development is expected. Finally, LED lamps will completely take place of traditional lamps, becoming the mainstream lighting products.

LED lighting broad: in cascade or in parallel?

 

LED lighting broad are typically used in LED panels and in some cases LED street lights. There are connection ways for LEDs: in cascade and in parallel. In practice, the most likely used ways are all kinds of combinations of cascade circuits and parallel circuits, determined by the specific requirements of input/output voltage, power factor, etc.

 

LED lighting broad are typically used in LED panels and in some cases LED street lights. There are connection ways for LEDs: in cascade and in parallel.

 

 

 

In what way should LEDs be connected? In cascade or in parallel? Which connection is more suitable for LED lighting broad work with a wide range (AC85V-265V)? At present, most LED power suppliers are none-isolated. The output of wide range voltage should not larger than 72V. In other words, the maximum number of cascaded LED chips is 23. Also, number of LEDs in parallel is limited, normally 6 group/8 group/12 group. If we connect too many LEDs in parallel, the working current (240mA in total) will exceed the threshold level and lead to an excess temperature, causing damages to LED Street Light.

 

 

Relations of LED series-parallel connection with PFC power factor:

The current LED power suppliers in the market have three different types of PFC: 1. Power suppliers without any specialized PFC circuits, PFC of which is around 0.65; 2. Power suppliers with passive PFC circuits, PFC of which is around 0.92; 3. Power suppliers with active 7527/6561 PFC circuits, PFC of which is about 0.99. If fact, the power factor of solution 2 is just a little bit lower than that of solution 3, but cost much less than it. LED High Bay manufacturers are more willing to design power suppliers with passive PFC circuits rather than active PFC circuits. Passive PFC circuit, also known as valley fill PFC circuit, has a working voltage half of the peak of the input voltage (AC). For example, if the input voltage has an average value of 180V, the peak value should be: 180 x 1.414 = 254V, half of it is 127V, subtract this value by 30V (voltage difference of the step-down supplier), then we have the maximum output voltage: 90V. That means the maximum cascaded LED chips is 28. Thus if we want to have a higher power factor, we cannot connect too many chips in series in the LED lighting broad. Otherwise, the low voltage cannot be reached.