Recently, as being concerned about Taiwan’s leading position may be replaced by South Korea and mainland China, LED specialists from Taiwan’s think tanks, academic institutions, trade organizations and private companies have urged the government to quickly pass laws to offer consumers subsidy for their procurements of LED lamps.

South Korea unseated Taiwan in 2009 as the world’s No.2 LED supplier. According to Director General Y.J. Chan of Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories of the government-backed Industrial Technology Research Institute , LED lighting market will take off worldwide in 2015 and South Korea will remain Taiwan’s prime competitor.

In mainland China, it plans to fill 70% of its domestic market for epitaxy wafers with homegrown suppliers, raising the possibility that Taiwan would lag behind the mainland in two years if the government remains ignorant about the trend.

Y.F. Yeh, chairman of Everlight,stressed that  “This is a serious warning for Taiwan, given the previous experience that DRAM and LCD conglomerates in South Korea surpassed their Taiwanese counterparts due to Taiwan government ignoring their undercutting schemes.”

In Yeh’s opinion, the government should emulate mainland Chinese, Japanese and South Korean governments to broadly replace LED for streetlights and traditional lamps in government organizations, encourage enterprises and shops to use LED lamps with tax incentives and subsidize consumers’ procurements of LED lamps.

According to Yeh , Despite Taiwan does not have mercury-light and energy-saving lamp industries, it has the world’s strongest LED-lighting industry in terms of advanced technology and complete patent coverage. Meanwhile, its manufacturing capability is as strong as that of Philips and Osram. If Taiwan government fails to take actions to foster Taiwan’s LED industry, the Taiwan industry will lose a good chance to become the world’s top LED-lighting maker.