月份：2012年9月

The Diaoyu Islands incident triggered variations of Japanese LED enterprises

15th of September is the 100th anniversary of Japanese electronics giant Sharp. Sharp-China panned to hold a series of large-scale commercial activities in Shanghai. But due to the further deterioration of the Diaoyu Islands incident, this plan has been halted.

 

The Diaoyu Islands incident triggered variations of Japanese LED enterprises

 

Similarly, the new president of Sony (China) has originally planned to promote a series of new products of TV sets and other digital products. However, this long-planned marketing project was also greatly impacted by the The Diaoyu Islands incident. The Diaoyu Islands incident triggered variations of large LED enterprises of Japan, including Japanese LED enterprises.

 

According to the relate market researches, from July to September, Japanese LED enterprises were losing their market share. Data shows that the Sharp TV’s share fell from 8.8% to 4.7%; Sony’s share fell from 5.9% to 4.4%; Panasonic’s share has dropped to only 0.4%; Toshiba, Sanyo and other Japanese big brands’ share all fell to less than 1%.

 

As a matter of fact, in order to reverse the strategy errors previously, Panasonic began to spend several billion yuan on promoting LED LCD TV sets. But the result turned out to be just the opposite of their wish. The market share was falling instead of rising. They had to pay for the advertising costs.

 

The Diaoyu Islands incident made many Japanese LED enterprises be sandwiched between the two giants. “It is no longer as simple commercial battles, it is a series of conflicts between two large countries. China is the largest producer of LED and meanwhile the largest market of LED lights in the world. If it is possible, we don’t want to lose this place. The resistance from the media and the public is the thing that we were most worried about. ” Sony prepared a fair for digital products and LED lighting products in Guangzhou on 12th of September, their PRs expressed their anxiety about this event. Although most of the media attend the meeting on that day, the originally planned promotion of a new series of Interchangeable Lens Digital Camera (ILDC) was impacted by the gradually warming Diaoyu Islands incident. After being ready for the September market in China, Sony felt unprecedented pressure. It is a hard time for them and other Japanese LED enterprises in China.

Analysis of indoor white-ray LED lighting applications

As a kind of lighting sources with huge developing potentials, people paid more and more attentions on their incomparable advantages: long service life, rugged construction, low power consumption and flexible appearance. In recent years, single-ray LED technologies have been widely used in various areas, like large screens, signal lamps and landscape lighting applications. With the rapid development of LED, white-ray LED lighting technology was finally stood out from the crowd and conquered the most consumers, giving them full of expectations on white-ray LED lighting applications. It has been proved that white-ray LED lighting applications are more advanced in lighting efficiency, CRI, color temperature. In the meanwhile, the magnificent parameters of LEDs, like power consumption of signal LED chips and luminous flux of the entire LED model continued to make breakthrough.

 

As a kind of lighting sources with huge developing potentials, people paid more and more attentions on their incomparable advantages

 

However, using white-ray LED lighting applications indoors is still a big challenge for LED manufacturers. There are still a lot of technological problems need to be solved. Take single LED chip for example, the luminous flux of single LED chip cannot meet the basic requirements for indoor lighting applications. In addition, the over-expensive production costs, less lighting efficiency than common energy-saving lamps, lacking of stabilities, etc. Currently, only testing results can “cheer people up”. It really takes time to produce market-oriented products that truly meet the lighting requirements in practices. It is an inevitable truth for developers, producers and buyers.

 

The development status of white-ray LEDs.

Born in 1960s, the brightness of LED increased 30 times by average for every 10 years. On the other hand, their prices dropped nearly 10 times for every 10 years. The development of LED technology was completely followed the “Hydes’s Law”. According to related reports, the current luminous efficiency of white-ray LEDs is around 100lm/W (laboratory data), while the actual high-powered white-ray LED lighting applications in commercial and industrial area has also reach up to 40lm/W. With the continuous breakthrough in technologies, the luminous efficiency of high-powered white-ray LED lights still has large room for growth. It is estimated that by 2020, the maximum luminous efficiency of white-ray LED lamps can reach up to 150-200lm/W. In the meanwhile the luminous flux of these applications was also been proved dramatically due to the technological breakthrough in packaging and heat dissipation. From a latest data report from Nichia, LED modules with 5.5W (250lm) and 11W (400lm) have been successfully developed recently, which is a big step forward for white-ray LED lighting industry.

LED lighting applications: the path of popularity is full of difficulties

The energy crisis and the enhancement of environmental protection awareness gave global LED lighting market a prosperous future. In the dual stimulus coming from the market and the regulations, the global LED industry showed a rapid increasing. At present, the semiconductor lighting industry has formed a new industrial distribution and competitive landscape in the world, the three pillars of the United States, Europe and Asia. North America and Japan are always in a leading position in the upstream chip manufacturing. In Asia area, Taiwan also has very powerful LED core technologies and occupied a large amount of the mainland’s market. In Europe, the traditional lighting giant, Philips, OSRAM have shared the entire LED lighting market.

 

The energy crisis and the enhancement of environmental protection awareness gave global LED lighting market a prosperous future.

 

Thanks to the increasing enthusiasm of customers to environmental friendly products, not only developed countries, but also a lot of developing countries start to develop LED lighting applications and exploit their local markets. Frankfurt Lighting Fair in Germany was always been considered as the largest, the most important and the most authoritative lighting exhibition in the world. In past few years, LED lighting applications occupied a dominant position. More and more LED manufacturers emerged in this exhibition.

 

Currently, the majority of LED lighting applications are from commercial area. However, the over expensive prices blog the popularity of LED lighting products in this part. It is estimated that if the price of LED lights were reduced by more than 30%, the proportion of LED lights in the entire lighting market would have increased to 60% based on the research data. Thus, how to improve technology contents and meanwhile reduce production costs became the most significant issues waiting to be solved.

 

For the development strategy of China’s LED lighting industry, Mr. Zaihua He, a senior investment consultant, indicated that “LED lighting industry is having a rapid development here in China. The number of enterprises that entered this area each year grew linearly. Everyone treated LED as a giant delicious cake, if you come, you can have one bite. But actually, this phenomenon is very dangerous for the entire lighting market.” It is true that the large capital inflowing blindly will cause chaos to the market. At first, abnormal developments will emerge among industry chains, including serious disconnection, downturn of profits. There will be only input with no output. Secondly, the blind investment in the downstream of the LED lighting industry will speed up the compression of the margin profit and increasing the intense of competitions.

Chinese-style LED bulb market

1st of October in this year, the China Government will launch a ban for incandescent lamps. It has been explicitly indicated in relevant documents that incandescent lamps with power consumptions more than 100W should stop selling in the mainland. It will be an opportunity for LED bulbs or not? Whether the implementing of such issue can improve the relatively downturn LED lights bulbs market? Some people felt confident about this market, but some other people still expressed their concerns.

 

1st of October in this year, the China Government will launch a ban for incandescent lamps.

 

Experts believed that in Japan, in Korea and other places of South-East Asia and North America, LED bulb market has huge developing potentials. Under the influences of European debt crisis, many LED manufacturers chose to step back.

 

Earlier, OSRAM, GE Lighting, Philips and other international companies have introduced their own LED bulb series, having good performances in the lighting of Japan, Korea and North America. However, the performances of China’s LED lighting products could not make people satisfied.

 

The market spindle of LED bulb lighting industry is in rural areas. But subjected to the high prices of LED lighting products and the limited market awareness, the rural market has not yet been fully opened. Besides, the over-expensive selling prices is one of the three biggest obstacles that blog the increasing of market awareness in LED lighting area. In fact, whether LED bulbs can successfully take place of incandescent bulbs or not raised suspiciousness in the heart of both producers and buyers.

 

Consumers’ concerns usually showed as followed:

1)       Incandescent lamps can be used in the kitchen, while LED bulbs could not escape the interferences of fumes and dust.

2)       Unmatched base. Normally, incandescent lamps used in rural areas used B22 base, totally different from the E27 bases of LED bulbs. Thus the replacement of incandescent lamps with LED bulbs will be more complex than “screwing”.

3)       Incandescent applications are usually used in low-end places. Buyers may probably be unwilling to afford such expensive products (LED bulbs) in relatively unimportant places.

 

In view of the above points, you can speculate that if incandescent lamps exit in the domestic lighting market, LED bulbs will not meet the demand in some areas. In addition, it is incandescent lamps with power consumption higher than 100W that will be banned in the mainland market. LED manufacturers should not put too much expectation on the LED bulb market.

LED lighting industry has its modes for chasing money

A few days ago, I attached the LED seminar held in Shanghai. About 200 people attended, most of them are local LED manufacturers. Some of them delivered a speech in the seminar, shared their experience or expressed their opinions on running a LED company in the right direction.

 

A few days ago, I attached the LED seminar held in Shanghai. About 200 people attended, most of them are local LED manufacturers.

 

As the 4th generation lighting source, LED lighting industry still in the early stage of their development, full of potentials and opportunities, plus the support policies coming from local governments. During this meeting, many attendances posed questions, like “Many LED patents are about to expire. What kind of influences would this effect on the entire domestic LED lighting industry? Positive or negative? ”, “In terms of market, What the size of it during the replacement process (fluorescent lamps replaced by LED lights)?”, “Whether the gathering of LED industrial bases can be finally realized?”. Most attendances were filled with expectation and nervous. No one has a clear sight for the future in such market chaos.

 

In the Japanese market, as a result of power shortages caused by the earthquake and tsunami, energy-saving technology, like LED lamps have become a hot topic among buyers, producers and even the government. LED bulbs enjoyed a hot selling in 2011, shortening the distance with incandescent bulbs. It is expected that the sales hot will be continued in 2012. On the other side, with the increasingly mature of LED technology and gradually normalization of the market, the price of LED bulbs continuously dropped for a long time. According the related research results, the dropping rate of LED bulbs’ prices was even higher than LED screens in 2011. However, some experts yet came with totally opposite conclusions. In their opinion, by the end of 2012, the Japanese LED bulb market will touch the top and then turn down.

 

In consideration of the above analysis, some LED producers started to shifted their attention from LED bulbs to LED ceiling mounted lamps. LED ceiling mounted lamps is a type of LED panel, which is another important member in the whole family of LED lighting industry. Normally, selling prices of LED ceiling mounted lamps are within the range of 20,000 yen to 50,000 yen. Although they were classified as high-value commodities, they still had good performances in Japanese market. According to the introduction of GfK, LED ceiling mounted lamps accounted for about 70% sales in the complete market for ceiling mounted lamps.

LED city lighting: who are playing this game?

According to 2008-2010 statistics, it is expected that by 2012, the market size of outdoor LED lighting applications will be 6.4 billion $, in which 4.3 billion $ are from LED lights.

 

According to 2008-2010 statistics, it is expected that by 2012, the market size of outdoor LED lighting applications will be 6.4 billion yuan, in which 4.3 billion yuan are from LED street lights.

 

In LED city lighting area, the government was always a supporter. Surveys reflected an upward trend in the percentage of LED lighting applications used in city lighting projects. “This is a huge cake, a 100-billion-size of cake, how to share it evenly? If it is possible, than each exiting domestic LED producers will become a billionaire. For me, the answer is no, they will never carve up this cake evenly, the market is a battlefield.” Said one CEO of a LED company in China. Currently, there are about 1000 LED lighting manufacturers (large scaled) in the mainland. Indeed, if the 100-billion-size market is shared evenly, each one of these manufacturers can obtain at least one billion $. However, it is no difficult to find out that manufacturers “really involved in the LED city lighting projects” are always a few familiar faces.

 

In fact, LED lighting applications and related control systems applied in the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo are all from several well-known international brands, like Philips, OSRAM, Bridgestar, etc. while other complementary products were all provided by large-scaled domestic lighting enterprises, like NVC, Starlight, TCL, Lonon, Simon Electric, Xinwen Line, CH Lighting.

 

“We have no quality for national lighting projects. For local municipal lighting projects, we cannot afford. In spite of participating every competitive tenders, only those who done a good job in public relations can finally win. ” implied this CEO in a helpless manner. Indeed, in China, usually those giant companies with considerable strength and deep local background can win in LED city lighting project biddings. In Dongguan, whenever there was a bid, there must be Kingsun (the largest LED lighting manufacturer in Dongguan) and always won the final bidding.

 

Municipal lighting project is a game with few players, and always those few players. Said the CEO from another small sized LED company. But like thousands of small and medium-sized LED lighting business owners, he was a veteran in the war of the competitive tender of municipal lighting projects, filling with hopes for the future market and the development of his company. They not only concentrated on city lighting projects, non-government commercial project is another big cake for them.

LED project lighting: a big cake waiting for share

The temptation of domestic LED project lighting is unbeatable. In the 2008 Olympics, LED lighting applications attracted people’s attention for the first time. More than 500,000 high-powered LED bulbs, 37,000 special sets for LED lamps, totally 50,000 square meters lighting area, the splendid Water Cube is a new miracle in the architecture history. LED lighting technology was also used in the opening ceremony, which gave the world a deep impression.

 

The temptation of domestic LED project lighting is unbeatable. In the 2008 Olympics, LED lighting applications attracted people’s attention for the first time.

 

Subsequently, in the 60th Anniversary Gala of the National Day, 4028 performers dressing with small LED lights in Tiananmen Square constituted the theme “Light Cube” performance. The colorful LED lighting effect reproduced the sutra in the Beijing Olympics.

 

In 2010 Shanghai World Expo, LED project lighting again became a focal point. That grand event became the world’s biggest LED show and the Expo site also became the world’s largest LED demonstration area at that moment. More than 2 million LED units were used on the one kilometer-long Expo axis. And about 1.03 billion LED chips were used within the entire Expo site. About 80% lighting sources in the venues are LED lamps.

 

In past few years, LED project lighting applications were not only used in large venues, but also in infrastructures and other municipal projects, such as rail ways, airports, subways, railway stations, tunnels, urban roads, even public gardens.

 

In early 2009, the State Ministry of Science and Technology launched the “Ten City, Thousands Lamps” semiconductor lighting program. This plan covered 21 large cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Nanjing, etc. Quickly, this program extended to 50 cities. By 2010, 21 pilot cities all started the LED street reconstruction works. Chongqing, Weifang, Dongguan, Baoding already had their LED street lighting standards. Especially in Weifang, the coverage rate of LED street lights has reached 84%. It is estimated that at the end of this year the entire city can realize a full coverage of LED street lighting applications.

 

LED project lighting applications also played an important role in landscape lighting. LED lamps has become the primary choice for government procurement in many areas, like city building lighting projects, landscape lighting projects, city square lighting projects. In large LED industrial bases, like Shenzhen, Xiamen, Ningbo, Tianjin, the traditional landscape lighting applications are replacing by LED landscape lighting applications. This process is accelerating. In Hefei, the coverage of landscape lighting LED lamps has reached up to 70%.

LED lighting applications will PK with energy-saving lamps in domestic lighting market

According to the recently issued “Notice of ban on the import and sale of general incandescent lamps” from NDRC, from 1st of October 2012, incandescent lamps will be gradually banned to import and sale depending on specific power consumption. It is estimated that by 2016, incandescent lamps will completely vanish from the stage of market. In the mean while, with the implement of various energy-saving policies from government, energy-saving lamps and LED lighting applications will vigorously developed in the near future. However, which one will occupy the lighting market and win the final battle? In this article, we will do some comparisons between these two types of lamps.

 

LED lighting applications will PK with energy-saving lamps in domestic lighting market

 

CFL compact fluorescent lamps having the same luminous flux (brightness) with incandescent lamps only consume 1/4 energy of them. Compared with traditional incandescent lights, CFL lamps can save a lot of energy. Thus they are also called energy-saving lamps.

 

LED is a kind of semiconductor component, which can convert electrical energy into optical energy. With the same level of luminous flux, the energy consuming of LED lighting applications is only 1/3 of incandescent lights. In addition, LED lights can be intelligently controlled. Intelligent technology can dramatically increase the efficiency of LED lighting applications and meanwhile reduce management costs.

 

In accordance with the quality standard of energy-saving lamps, the average service life of energy-saving lamps is around 6000 hours. Some giant lighting enterprises have even more stringent requirements on the service life of their products, like new type spiral energy-saving lamps, the average service life can reach up to 10,000 hours (about 1 years). After 10,000 hours’ constant work, the light intensity will dropped to 30%.

 

In theory, the average service life of LED lights is around 50,000 hour – 80,000 hours (5 years – 9 years). It has been proved that many LED products (small lights) in the market can maintain a light intensity around 60% of the initial output after 50,000 hours’ constant works. Some manufacturers even announced that their LED lights can maintain a normal work after 100,000 hours. However, all these are theoretical values which have been measured or estimated in ideal conditions (constant temperature, constant humidity and constant current). In practices, the service life of LED lighting applications will be much less than these. 

Rapid changes in LED lighting market in China

In order to respond the rapid development of LED lighting market, some giant LED manufacturers had to conduct internal reconstruction and remake commercial plans. Some traditional lighting application producers also promote LED lighting model and procedure to present their willingness to enter this market.

 

In order to respond the rapid development of LED lighting market, some giant LED manufacturers had to conduct internal reconstruction and remake commercial plans.

 

In the second quarter report of the new century, orders for outdoor display signage in mainland dropped dramatically. The rate of capacity utilization of Green-ray LEDs in the second quarter report was no more than 60%. Although the rate of capacity utilization of Blue-ray LED applications was fully loaded, it still caused huge losses to the entire LED lighting market. According to the new Century, it is estimated that new high-currently LED lighting products will be promoted in the third quarter, which will exert positive effect on LED lighting industry. Due to the unsatisfied performance of Green-ray LEDs, many producers shifted their attention on Blue-ray LED products. They believed that developing nonstandard LED lighting products can avoid the over-competitive market and also the pressure of dropping prices. As a whole, the performance of the third quarter will be better than the second one.

 

At present, there are more than 3000 LED manufacturers and more than 5000 small-sized factories in China. So many businesses competing for the limited channels, price battle is inevitable. Some experts expressed their anxiety about this market. There are many export-oriented LED enterprises in the mainland. But in the international market, the extensive development of China’s LED lighting industry still cannot guarantee the profit. The domestic LED lighting market is more relying on network channels. But the small volume is insufficient to support the development of the entire industry. Throughout the domestic lighting market, LED did not threaten the popularization of traditional lamps. LED still only played a supporting role in the lighting market.

 

Despite the poor domestic market channels, people still found the huge potential in the LED lighting market. It is not hard to understand that the government carried out a large number of relevant projects in recent years. These large projects speeded up the development of LED industry in many aspects. Plus the support policies, LED lights lamps performed brilliantly in municipal lighting, landscape lighting, street reconstruction and stadium lighting projects. All these made the frustrated LED manufacturers be full filled with hope.

LED underground packing lights: a beginning of the popularization

Many LED engineers are accustomed to make judgment according to their own opinions and would like to impose these views to economic strategies of their companies. For instance, if the annual selling plan of a certain LED company is to complete 800,000 USD sales in some regions, so the annual purchases should match up this volume. In fact, in most of time, we should consider issues from customers’ perspective. The first thing that consumers may take into account is the price and certainly, the cost-effective. Some far-sighted consumers may even compare the one-time investment and long-term investment and take some tradeoff between them. For example, if commonly used energy-saving lamps can be used about one year and costs only 10 yuan, while equivalent LED lights can serve for 5 years but costs 40 yuan. If electricity bills and other fees coming from repair and maintenance are not going to be considered of, it seems like LED lamps cost less than energy-saving lamps (only 8 yuan per year). However, most consumers may probably choose energy-saving lamps rather than LED lights. Why? Firstly, compared with other parts in the house, like necessary furniture and electrical appliances, lamps are less important. Sometimes, they may be sued as decorations in some places. It is afraid that people will not spend much money on this part if they have very limited budget. 2) The price dropping is another factor that they may think of. No one can promise that after 2-3 years, the price of LED lamps still maintain on the same level as today. As an emerging market, LED lamp prices will be definitely reduced in the near future.

 

Many LED engineers are accustomed to make judgment according to their own opinions and would like to impose these views to economic strategies of their companies.

 

However, situations are totally different in underground parking. Although LED lamps are not seen having a bright future in residential area, they really received a lot of confidence in underground parking applications. As a result of 24-hour lighting, underground parking lighting system consumed much more electricity than household lights. In order to reduce the payment on electricity, engineers would like to prefer more energy-saving lighting technology. Thus LED underground packing lights became a brand new but popular idea among them. It is estimated that LED underground packing lights can save more than 90% electricity compared with traditional fluorescent lamps. The average price of LED lights (normally dimmable tubes with infrared sensors) that used in underground parking is 135 yuan. Supposed the electricity charge is 0.6 yuan per kilowatt-hour, then constructors can get back the cost on lighting system in about 260 days if they choose to use LED underground packing lights.