标签：LED lighting applications

Brief analysis for LED lighting applications market trends

The bright development prospects of LED lighting applications make people feel more confident in the LED lighting market. Nowadays, the world is under the threat of energy shortage. Governments all over the world launched environmental protection policies and increase support in the LED industry. With the vigorous development of LED lighting technology, LED lighting applications has gradually transferred from street lighting, outdoor landscape lighting to indoor residential lighting and commercial lighting.

 

The bright development prospects of LED lighting applications make people feel more confident in the LED lighting market.

 

Currently, LED Panel Light has been deeply used in the residential lighting area. Although domestic LED market is still dominated by LED street lights (for industrial purpose) and LED flood lights (for commercial purpose), LED panels and LED downlights with dimming and RGB functions started to attract the attention of ordinary buyers and merchants. The over-expensive production cost is the biggest obstacle that hindered the promotion of LED productions in the residential lighting area. Thus after 20-year development, LED still can hardly be accepted by the household lighting market. Using sapphire as chip substrates, using gold as conducting material, there is no doubt that LEDs are also known as “noble lamps”.

 

It is estimated that by 2015, the market penetration of LED lamps will reach up to 16.8%. Under the stimulus of governments support policies, the penetration rate of LED household lighting applications and street lighting applications will sharply increased. LED bulbs and LED tubes are stable growing every year in Japan’s lighting market. The main force is from the earthquake happened in March 2011, in Japan. The Japanese Governments started to realized the important of energy saving and environmental protection. In the mean time, a large number of new LED suppliers entered this area and speeded up their production and development. Take 500×500 LED chips for example, compared with 2010, the overall supply raised by 41% in 2011. On the contrary, the demand grew only 10%, which led to the oversupply of 500×500 LED chips in 2011. 2011 is a challenging year for LED manufacturers. Due to the slow growth of we LED TV sales and the improvement of luminous efficiency of LED chips, since 2010, the TV backlight industry faced with demand reversal problem. But overall, the demand for LED in the LCD backlight applications is also slightly increased, pulse the improvement of PC and LCD display applications, which compensated for the gradually declined demand in the TV market.

Incandescent lamps have comprehensively banned in EU, a new era for LED lighting applications

31st August 2012 is the deadline for the EU Government to comprehensively ban incandescent bulbs in any countries and regions within EU. Our researchers visited several large supermarkets and electrical stores in Brussels and found that low-wattage (less than 40W) incandescent lights have been completely replaced by energy-saving lamps with the similar power consumption.

 

Incandescent lamps have comprehensively banned in EU, a new era for LED lighting applications

 

The comprehensive ban of incandescent bulbs in EU presents the end of 100 years of “Edison Era”. As early as March 2007, the European Commission put forward proposals to replace incandescent lights with other more energy-saving lighting technologies. In March 2009, the European Commission formally adopted an order to phase out incandescent lights gradually.

 

Related tests showed that only 5% of the electrical energy can be converted to optical energy for incandescent lights, the remaining 95% energy will be converted into wasted heat. It is obvious that the elimination of incandescent lights is inevitable. Banning is mainly for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. It is showed that if replace incandescent lights with energy-saving lights in all EU member states, the saved electricity can supply Romania for one year.

 

The elimination of incandescent lights means the expansion of the market of new energy-saving lamps. Nowadays, among all kinds of energy-saving lamps, it is LED lighting applications and energy-saving lamps (compact fluorescent lamps) has become the two main lighting tools with higher cost-effective.

 

In assessments conducted by related institutes to all kinds of lamps available in the market, LED always obtained a high score. LED lighting applications have many advantages: high energy efficiency, environmental friendly, long service life, beautiful appearance and high luminous efficiency. They have broad market prospects. Compared with incandescent lights and city street light , the energy-saving ratio of LED lighting applications can reach up to 90%. Although, the current selling prices of LED lights are much higher, they can work 25 times longer than incandescent lights. Experts pointed out that the production costs of LED lamps will reduce with the improving of LED technology. Accordingly, the LED’s price dropping is just a problem of time. Studies published by McKinsey Analysis suggested that a current 20 euros LED lights will be sold on 3 euros in 2020. Some experts predicted that with the decline in the production cost of LED lights, these high-tech lighting products will go into mass production stage from next year.

Southeast Asia and Africa: emerging markets for LED lighting applications

In 2012, the gross market size of Thailand lighting market is approximate 250 million USD. The LED penetration rate is around 10%. It is estimated that by 2015, the penetration rate of LED lighting applications in Thailand market will increase to more than 45%. Currently, the Thailand Government is actively planning a series of city lighting projects by using LED lighting applications. A lot of local LED makers and LED manufacturers from other regions, especially from China and Taiwan have engaged into these projects. China’s LED companies mains led lighting with local certificate of origin can enjoy a zero tariffs when exported their products into Thailand. But lighting sources that exported to Thailand still need to provide the local certification.

 

Southeast Asia and Africa: emerging markets for LED lighting applications

 

Since most regions of Thailand have a tropical monsoon climate, hot and rainy, LED lighting applications that exported into this country should strengthen the protection of heat and moisture. LED manufacturers need also take into account of exporting LED emergency lights, LED flashlights and other portable LED devices to Thailand.

 

The Vietnam Government has recently announced a draft of “2011-2020 plan for the national urban development”, hoping to realize a 38% urbanization in the whole country in 2015. Thank to this draft, Vietnam has been considered as another emerging market for LED lighting applications in Southeast Asia. A large number of LED producers from the mainland and Taiwan region have entered into this market, promoting public lighting concepts and industrial lighting products.

 

In Africa, about 90% rural population is lacking of electricity supply. Small streets or country road are illuminated by nothing. Basic lighting market and municipal lighting market are the two most potential markets in Africa, waiting for development. For a long time, the lighting market of Africa has been in a low-level stage. They do not have many strict requirements in product performances and functions. Products with low production costs, basic lighting functions, longer service life and simple operation can fully meet the need of local markets. United Nations have launched a series of development lighting programs in Africa, supplying more energy efficient LED lighting applications to users from Africa. Off-grid solar LED lighting products, indoor and portable LED lamps, 1W-5W solar LED bulbs and LED emergency lights are very popular in African market.

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.

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.