LED lighting has come a long way from its initial days. Today it is combined with digital lighting controls to create smart lighting solutions that dramatically save on energy consumption and the related operating costs. But in addition to these savings, organizations deploying smart lighting solutions are achieving impressive results in other ways. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Universal Display Corporation this month has confirmed two partnerships for OLED production.

SloanLED announces it has won a national rollout LED lighting upgrade with Engen, one of Africa’s energy companies. The Engen program has commenced with several trial sites in South Africa utilizing SloanLED’s lighting solution.

Ameresco, an energy efficiency and renewable energy company providing energy infrastructure solutions, announced that its UK operation was awarded and delivered a £3 million energy performance contract (EPC) across four colleges in Scotland—Edinburgh College, Borders College, Newbattle Abbey College, and West Lothian College.

Researchers have designed a new LED-based train headlight that uses a tenth of the energy required for headlights using conventional light sources. If operated 8 hours every day, the electricity savings of the new design would reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by about 152 kilograms per year.

Seoul Semiconductor on February 20 has won the patent invalidity litigation action that was filed against Everlight Electronics in the United Kingdom.

Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting, one of the fastest growing FMCG companies in India has launched Wipro Z Nxt, an integrated home automation solution. This system enables the user to transform any ordinary home into a smart home, where the complete household can be controlled from any smart devices, anywhere in the world.

High-tech company Osram is increasingly focusing on digitalization trends. During the Annual General Meeting, CEO Olaf Berlien outlined to shareholders the promising path the long-established company will take over the coming years.

As Artemide continues to experience exponential growth across North America, Vice President of Sales, Claude Blache, recognized the need to redefine their approach, embracing the sales model to its fullest potential.  Artemide is enhancing its presence in all segments of the lighting market to sustain its brand awareness, leading position and current sales growth. The company’s focus is to strengthen its presence in the Architectural and Design sectors, fostering current relationships and developing new ones.

A new ultrathin, elastic display that fits snugly on the skin can show the moving waveform of an electrocardiogram recorded by a breathable, on-skin electrode sensor. Combined with a wireless communication module, this integrated biomedical sensor system - called "skin electronics" - can transmit biometric data to the cloud.

Philips Lighting published a new report together with SmartCitiesWorld that highlights the drivers and hurdles faced by local authorities considering implementing a smart city program. 

Light influences our lives in many ways including our health, moods, productivity, concentration, sleep cycles, decision making and emotions. With the adoption of smart lighting and IoT, lighting characteristics such as color, intensity and timing can automatically adjust to meet the needs of occupants. For example, in this article by Digital Lumens (now OSRAM), the author states, “In your kids’ elementary school, biometric sensors will track students’ alertness, subtly shifting spectrum to automatically boost their focus any time it starts to wane.”

Philips Lighting has selected SUSI Partners' SUSI Energy Efficiency Fund (SEEF) as financing partner to implement Light as a Service (LaaS) projects to help European lighting customers upgrade their lighting to more energy-efficient systems and reduce carbon emissions.

LEDinside would like to thank everyone for your support and regular visit to our online magazine. As Chinese New Year is approaching, we will temporarily stop updating industry news until February 21.

A group of neuroscientists from Michigan State University lately revealed a new research indicating that dim ambient light might affect one’s brain.

LEDVANCE has successfully delivered 25 million energy-efficient LED lamps to Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), the Indian government agency in charge of executing India‘s UJALA (Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All) initiative.

On February 2, 2018, Seoul Semiconductor filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Italy in the Court of Milan against Mouser Electronics Inc., a global electronic components distributor, as well as its Italian subsidiary – for the sale of certain Everlight LED products.

Display makers have been scrambling for the production of smartphone OLED screens for the iPhone X; however, the phone faces a tepid sales and even a possibility to be discontinued in 2018.

Samsung Electronics literally will take LED engagement to new heights with the introduction of ‘The Wall Professional’ – a modular, large-format indoor Micro LED display that can extend to hundreds of inches in size while delivering outstanding brightness, contrast and viewing angles. The Wall Professional will serve as the centerpiece of the Samsung booth at ISE 2018.

Lighthouse Technologies Limited (Lighthouse), a LED video display solutions specialist has joined forces with Macroblock, an expert in LED Driver IC to launch the new Quantum q fine pitch LED Screen Series (1.5mm, 1.8mm & 2.5mm pixel pitch) using the Macroblock’s 48-Ch LED Driver IC MBI5353 to deliver the unprecedented LED fine pitch display screen at ISE 2018.

Phoseon Technology announces that utilizing its patented SLM technology and proprietary thermal management system achieves a breakthrough level of deep-UV irradiance targeted at disinfection and decontamination Life Science applications.

Innolux yesterday (February 6) demonstrated a 10.1-inch AM Mini LED display at a shareholder meeting. This new technology will be officially commercialized in the automotive electronics market, said Chin-Lung Ting, Executive Vice President of Innolux Corporation. Before that, the Taiwan-based company will continue the development of other devices.

The emergence of Micro LED does steal some of the limelight from OLED that has been dominating the television market for the past few years, but can Micro LED really challenge OLED?

Seren Photonics, the UK-based developer of semipolar and nonpolar Gallium Nitride (GaN) based products, has successfully completed the first tranche of a £1m investment round with funding from existing and new investors.

According to the latest report of WitsView, a division of TrendForce, global shipments of branded LCD TV sets for 2017 totaled 211 million units, a decrease of 4.1% compared with prior year. This is a new low since 2014, indicating a bottleneck in the development of TV industry. In 2018, TV brands will focus on large-size, high-resolution products, and also develop high-end products like QLED and OLED TVs, hoping to push sales and regain profits by specifications upgrade.

Samsung will be hosting a product launch event in New York. The announcement draws the world’s attention for Samsung did not unveil all the new TVs at CES 2018 and it is considering some changes to its product strategies.

Multinational electronics company Panasonic will start growing and marketing high-value vegetables in China from March 2018 with its vertical farm in Suzhou. Those vegetables will be made into salads and sold to up to 30 shops in Suzhou and Shanghai.

Chinese LED behemoth San’an Optoelectronics today issued a document announcing that it will team up with Samsung to Co-develop Micro LED displays.

LEDVANCE announced to recall its recessed canister light kits after receiving reports of customers.

Seoul Semiconductor announced 2017 fiscal year consolidated revenues of US$ 1.04 billion. The 16% rise in consolidated revenues far exceeds the industry average, which grew 2% during the same period. The growth of revenue is contributed to improvements in both general lighting sales and IT product related sales growing in the mid-teens as well as the automotive lighting business which grew more than 20%.