It’s reported that Taiwan Delta Electronics has made a contract with Osram for LED light bulbs using chipmaker Epistar `s high-voltage chip, a solution to making LED luminaires adaptable to household 110-220V power outlets.
Apart from that, Yancey Hai, the Delta Chief Executive, also unveiled the company had recently added a European buyer to its customer list, and it would considerably boost capacity utilization rate at the company’s Dongguan-based factory in Guangdong Province of China.
Based on this, someone familiar with Delta`s LED-bulb plan predicted that the company would ship five to 10 folds more bulbs in 2011 than it will do in 2010, making the bulb the company`s new growth driver.
Not long before, Delta has also secured Hitachi contracts for the bulbs, helping swell the company’s shipments of the bulbs to one million a year.
However, industry executives analyze that Hitachi demands Delta to use Japan-made chips in its bulbs contracted by Hitachi, making the contracts beneficial to no Taiwanese chipmakers.
At present, Osram has signed an agreement with Epistar on cross-license patents. Delta has been considered to build Epistar chips into its bulbs designated by Osram.
It’s said that Epistar high-voltage chip to be the world`s most efficient chip of this kind, reportedly outperforming the one each developed by Cree and Philips Lumileds.
According to Epistar executives, they have worked with Delta on the chip for awhile, but have no idea of to whom Delta would ship its high-voltage bulbs.