As one of the first cities taking part in the LED lighting plan of 10,000 lights each in ten cities initiated by China Ministry of Science and Technology, Shanghai is gradually expanding LED energy-saving lights and signal lights. It is estimated that in Shanghai, LEDs will finally replace traditional lights in the next 3 to 5 years.

There are huge potentials in Chinese LED lighting market. The potential market scale of common lightings exceeds 1 billion USD. Common lights are those lights used in offices, stores, hotels and families. Now LED lightings haven’t taken up many shares in this area. With the improvement of LED technologies and the reduction of costs, it is estimated that LED will finally enter the common lighting market in the next few years.

The common lighting area will become the largest market for LED and it is also the object for relevant dealers to fight for. To replace the current light tubes or light bulbs of common lightings, there are difficulties in costs and technologies for LED. The lighting efficiencies and brightness remain to be enhanced and costs are expected to reduce. Therefore, the LED penetration in the current lighting market is still low. The improvement of LED packaging technologies and material processing technologies will give breakthroughs to lighting efficiencies. Besides, the IC control can control the time and the brightness of LED illumination, which has enriched the original single lighting products and made them better than traditional lightings.

Restricted by the high prices of LED, undetermined industrial standard and unsolved problems as lighting shapes, lifetimes and reliabilities, the market scale of the global LED lighting industry in 2007 was only 330 million USD. Among them, the building lighting application is the primary market resource with a scale of 350 million USD, accounting for about 45% of the whole market scale. With the improvement of LED technologies and the broadness of LED application areas, it is estimated that the market scale in 2012 will reach 1.6 billion USD and the compound growth rate from 2007 to 2012 will reach 35%.

Besides in the lighting area, LEDs are also widely used in backlights, displays, automobile markets and transport information areas. According to statistics, Chinese domestic LED industry remains an annual growth rate of over 20% in recent years.

China Ministry of Science and Technology has put National Semiconductor Lighting Project on the Eleventh Five-year Development Program of Science and Technology and authorized 5 LED industrial bases in Shanghai, Dalian, Nanchang, Xiamen and Shenzhen. At present, Beijing, Guangdong, Fujian, Shaanxi, Liaoning and other cities have carried out LED streetlamp demonstration projects.