The Development Trend for China’s LED Lighting Industry
Since 2012, China’s LED industry has got rapid development, whether the output value or industry chain construction all has a relatively good achievement, due to the promotion from policy, capital and market. But from a global prospective, China’s LED industry is still in a young stage, especially the industrial technology level is low, forming a large gap with LED-developed countries. In the future, China’s LED will show the following trends. 1. Technology enhances and cost declines, ushering in the cost and quality competition. LED manufacturers have always devoted in improving product technology, reducing the cost of components and manufacturing. On one hand, enhancing R & D capabilities, improving the efficiency of the light emitted from the device can drive the price per kilolumen continuing to decline. Referring to the “the annual plan of solid-state lighting development” released by the US DOE in May of 2011, either for cool white or for warm white LED components, if luminous efficiency continued to improve, cost would decline. Cold white LED in the end of 2010 has developed to 134lm / w with price at $13 per kilolumen; warm white LED increased luminous efficiency to 96lm / w at the end of 2010, with price at $18 per kilolumen. As for the future development goal, DOE planned in 2015 the luminous efficiency of cold white LED component would increase to 224lm / w, and price down to $2 per kilolumen; while warm white LED would have luminous efficiency up to 02lm/w, with price slipping to $2.2 per kilolumen. On the other hand, enhance product quality and decline the overall manufacturing costs through improving manufacturing processes or materials. The upstream element technology improvement and cost reduction will drive the rapid promotion of downstream lighting products cost performance, LED industry is marching toward a reasonable and stable direction. Industry experts pointed out the price of LED products is decreasing at rate of about 20% per year, the future industry competition focus will turn to product quality and service.
LED industry shows business opportunity while the incandescent will be banned selling.
Incandescent bulbs is the world’s most popular lighting source, with market shares as high as 70%, but the luminous efficiency is only 8 ~ 20lm / W; and the efficiency of the lighting system as a whole is 50lm/W. Taking into account of energy-saving, countries successively have put forward plans, gradually eliminating incandescent bulb. China planned to ban the import and sale of 100 watts above incandescent bulbs in October of 2012; further forbid the import and sale of 60 watts above and 15 watts above incandescent bulbs in October of 2014 and of 2016, respectively.
In the promotion of countries forbidding manufacturing, lock-up and banning incandescent policy, looking for better- luminous-efficiency alternative light source becomes a top priority. LED bulbs, under the trend of price cutting and quality improving, is expected to become the best alternative light source replacing incandescent on the basis of the characteristics of long life, high luminous efficiency, low power consumption. From global lighting market view, by 2010, only Japan succeeded in the application of LED bulbs all over the country, the success factors of which include: the policy support from Japanese government, the price decline from the manufacturers’ fully cooperation, consumers’ high energy conservation and environmental protection awareness.
Product design starts from the demand end, emphasizing users’ experience.
Previous LED lighting manufacturers stressed the luminous efficiency, light output and product life; but now, the technical end growth has become inevitable, what can brighten users contrarily are those lamp products starting from a consumer perspective and enabling meeting the lighting needs of the end user. The lighting and color is the most frequent physical phenomena exposing to human beings; light intensity and color will have a different impact on people. When products focus more on human’s visual perception, the lighting R & D design should comprehensively consider sensation and perception received by man’s eyes and brain while focusing on human physiological and psychological needs. After LED lighting application got rapid expansion, whether manufacturers can design the LED lighting products meeting consumers’ requirements and creating the overall light environment and appropriate atmosphere, will be a major factor influencing LED application and popularity.
Enterprises will strengthen pathways layout, international mergers and acquisitions accelerate pace in LED development
Market access is the key factor pushing lighting products to the terminal development. LED components manufacturers in the past only need focus on the improvement of LED components’ the luminous efficiency, and deliver the semi-finished products to the downstream manufacturers to operate. As LED walking toward lighting application, more LED upstream manufacturers hope to move towards vertical integration, and directly access to terminal pathway and consumers. The completely different thinking way will be the challenge facing LED manufacturers; the lack of pathway layout experience also becomes a bottleneck for LED lighting products to the terminal.
In addition, in terms of national projects, the opportunity of LED mainly lies in: significant energy-saving technologies and equipment industrialization engineering: industrial semiconductor lighting and application engineering; “city mineral” demonstration project; industrial manufacturing engineering; industrial waste resource utilization engineering; major environmental protection technology and equipment and product industrialization demonstration project; desalination industry base construction; energy-saving cultivation project and environment protection service industry.
At present, major international lighting manufacturers relatively have advantages in the pathway layout. International lighting manufacturers with long brand development is less laborious in the pathway management, only needing to push the main commodities from traditional lighting sources to the emerging LED. Relying on brand and sales channel advantages, international well-known LED enterprises will speed up the pace of mergers and acquisitions, further enhancing enterprises’ competitiveness. For instance, Philips in last year has acquired one of the top five global lighting manufacturers–Spain Outdoor Lighting Group.