The U.S. ban on 40W and 60W incandescent bulbs put into effect by the U.S. Congress January 1st is an effort to promote more energy efficient lighting, such as CFLs and LEDs.

China LED industry stocks boomed on the first working day of 2014. Taiwanese companies including Unity Opto, Forepi, Para Light, and Arima Optoelectronics stocks rose 7 percent. Chinese manufacturer Changfang Lighting rose 10 percent and Changelight, Honglitronic, Ruifeng , Kingsun, and FSL all rose 3 percent.

Worth noting is China, the EU, Australia as well as other countries have already expanded regulation from commercial to residential and outdoor lighting. In 2013, Chinese regional residential lighting market scale reached US $5.9 billion (RMB 32.7 billion), a growth of 36 percent. Among this, the LED residential lighting market scale was US$ 814 million with a staggering growth of 96 percent, which is estimated to make up 24 percent of the global total.

Dropping prices for LEDs and gradual increase in luminosity has shortened the investment recovery period, said LEDinside. This has driven up global bulb replacement acceptance by companies and the public sector, officially kicking off the global LED replacement trend with bulbs and tube lighting becoming most popular products on the market. Compared with 2013, LEDinside anticipates global LED bulb demands in 2014 will reach 86 percent and 89 percent for LED tube demands.