LED core technology needs to be solved

According to an authoritative forecast, the global lighting market will exceed US$150 billion by 2020, an increase of 11.9% from US$134 billion in 2010. Although the overall scale does not increase significantly, the lighting product structure will change significantly. Among them, the LED lighting market share will increase from about 5 billion US dollars in 2010 to 75 billion US dollars. That is to say, 15 times expansion in 10 years.

It is understood that from the front line, since the beginning of this year, LED backlighting and lighting market demand, chips, packaging and application vendors full orders.

Some entrepreneurs and industry analysts believe that the LED outbreak will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, followed by a seven- to eight-year boom.

In addition, according to relevant data, the penetration rate of global LED lighting is currently only 10%. By 2015 or at the latest by 2020, the penetration rate will reach 50%.

In fact, due to the high cost of chips and heat sink materials, the application of LED products, especially lighting products, has been limited for a long time. Relevant data show that at the beginning of 2013, the purchase cost of LED lighting was 7-8 times that of ordinary energy-saving lamps, and it was 2 times that of the energy-saving lamps with dimming function.

LED dealers said that the current obstacle to the large-scale application of LED lighting products, a major factor is the price, once the cost of LED lamps dropped substantially, it is bound to promote the accelerated popularity of LED lighting products.

According to the reporter, LED lighting can save a lot of space. For example, the chip is expected to continue to drop by 20% in the future, and the heat-dissipating aluminum material can save 30%.

The quote from the merchant confirms this. According to the data of Jingdong Mall in May 2013, the price of a lighting brand of 800 lumens (equivalent to 60w incandescent Lamp brightness) is only RMB 50, which is equivalent to US$ 10 per 1000 lumens. If you take into account the export tax rebate, the export price is about 9 US dollars / 1000 lumens. This is already possible with the energy-saving lamps with dimming function as a “respect for courtesy”.

Gu Huaihuai, an analyst at Huaxi Securities, estimated in the research report that LED Light sources could fall to US$15/million lumens by the beginning of 2014, and the lighting price of some lighting manufacturers in the Asia-Pacific region may fall to US$8 per 1,000 lumens. After about 2 to 3 years, the cost of LED lighting products will drop to the critical substitution point for large-scale replacement of global energy-saving lamps (US$5).

He reasoned that the LED lighting market may erupt in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year.

Although the LED industry has shown a trend of “blowouts” in recent years, Chinese companies are still lacking in core technologies and patents, which restrict the long-term development of the entire LED industry. Even some of the core chips of SMEs rely on foreign imports. With the continuous expansion of the industry scale, technology patent issues will become the lifeblood of controlling the development of enterprises.

In the face of such a vast market, Chinese enterprises should not only stare at "scale expansion," but should "strengthen internal strength," and master core technologies before they can occupy larger market shares.