In its latest blog post, Osram addressed the significance of smart street lighting for future cities, noting that the digital transformation of city services is critical and will rely on connected city infrastructure. The United Nations foresees that by 2050, 68% of the world population will live in urban areas. For enhanced safety, operational efficiency and sustainability, this growing and concentrated population need to be supported by integrated system and services. Smart street lighting thus serves as a primary smart city installation to simultaneously create the unde...

Veeco announced financial results for the fourth quarter in 2019 and fiscal year 2019 ended December 31, 2019. For the 4Q19, the company registered a revenue of US$ 113 million, up by 14% YoY comparing to the revenue of US$ 99 million in 4Q18. Veeco also reports US$ 419 million for fiscal year 2019. Despite the revenue drop by 22% YoY, Veeco has lowered the net loss from US$ 407 million to US$ 78.7 million. Veeco marks 2019 as a transformational year with a return to profitability. The company reported improved gross margins which came to 40% and reduced expenses, ...

The outbreak of novel coronavirus continues to escalate and the production in China is postponing due to the epidemic, leading to expected production and supply chain delay. US-based lighting companies, Cooper Lighting Solutions and Satco, posted a notice respectively to inform their customers of the possible interruption of product supply. Cooper Lighting Solution noted in its “Coronavirus Update” that due to travel and logistics suspensions enacted by Chinese authorities, its suppliers have not resume production yet. This delay in operations capabilities wil...

Seoul Semiconductor published its fiscal 2019 and 4Q19 financial results. The company posted a consolidated revenue of KRW 1129.5 billion (US$ 954.5 million) and operating profit of KRW 49.6 billion (US$ 41.91 million) for 2019. For 4Q19, the consolidated fourth quarter revenue was KRW 280.9 billion (US$ 237.36 million) while the operating profit amounted to KRW 13.9 billion (US$11.75 million). Continuing global economic slowdown due to trade and political conflicts including trade war between the US and China led to the increase of inventory and decrease o...

Compound Photonics and Plessey Semiconductors announced the results of their collaboration, the first fully addressable Micro LED display modules. Engineering teams from both companies have fabricated functional Micro LED display modules combining CP’s high speed digital low-latency display backplane with Plessey’s GaN-on-Silicon monolithic Micro LED array technology. Plessey produced the Micro LED array wafer bonded to CP’s backplane wafer at its facility in the UK. In turn, CP’s team assembled and packaged display modules from t...

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2020, the world’s largest mobile phone show event which scheduled from February 24 to 27, has been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. (Image: MWC Barcelona 2020) John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA, organizer of MWC, announced the cancellation in the event of February 12. Since last week, several industry leaders have withdrawn their participation of the event, including Amazon, Facebook, Intel, LG, NVIDIA, Sony and more due to the coronavirus epidemic. “With due regard to the safe and healthy environment i...

Smart lighting solution provider Gooee announce its partnership with TClarke, a UK engineering company. The two partners signed a 5-year UK exclusive agreement enabling the Building Services Group to sell, install and maintain the Gooee suite of smart building products. As part of this agreement, TClarke has also taken a strategic shareholding in Gooee. This strategic partnership will enable Gooee’s platform to be deployed at scale throughout the UK and for the company to grow whilst taking advantage of the rapidly increasing demand for proptech solutions, focus...

The outbreak of coronavirus has affected the whole industry and LED is no exception. To further understand how individuals participate in the industry see the impact of coronavirus, LEDinside conducted a survey to provide a different insight of the industry.。 LEDinside collected 7471 voluntary samples and a valid sample of 6622. The result showed that 28% of the survey samples think their companies will still make profit under the circumstance. 38% say they are expecting business loss and the rest think the company will break even. (Image: Pixabay) 21% of the voters w...

As the world’s factory, the ongoing coronavirus epidemic caused continuous break for factories that affects worldwide companies. Technology companies from Taiwan and Korea are reporting delaying production as some of them have yet receive approval from the local governments to restart operation. (Image: Pixabay) According to a report of Business Korea, Samsung’s Tianjin plant which product TVs for the China market postponed the reopening for one more week and may need to push off the date again depending on the policy of the local government. Also, three of t...

With the goal of offering a comprehensive system solution around the ISELED technology, ISELED Alliance welcomed two new members, Elmos, who experts in automotive semiconductors and sensors, and automotive lighting manufacturer Cemm Thome. Both Elmos and Cemm Thome will provide innovative technologies and expertise around LED lighting to further strengthen and increase the ISELED ecosystem. (Image: ISELED) Elmos has its headquarters in Dortmund, Germany. The company develops, produces and markets semiconductors and sensors, primarily for use ...

The LG Group is selling the headquarter buildings in Beijing China for US$1.15 billion in order to boost its liquidity under global uncertainty since its business in China is going to be negatively impacted with coronavirus outbreak. According to the report of The Korea Times, LG Electronics expects that the coronavirus could impact its Chinese market and foresees a 7% drop in smartphone shipment for the first quarter. Facing the uncertain global circumstance, LG decided to sell the twin buildings for securing liquidity and to keep the flexibility for future merges, ...

Samsung Electronics is showcasing its leading displays including an expansion of QLED 8K SMART displays, new applications of The Wall and Samsung Flip 2 digital flipchart at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2020 starting today on February 11 to 14 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Image: Samsung) Participation of the event enables Samsung to introduce advanced commercial applications of its display technology, addressed Hyesung Ha, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. At ISE, the Korean giant push its Micr...

Chinese factories have set their reopen day on February 10, 2020, after the extended Lunar New Year holiday due to coronavirus outbreak. However, since over 80 cities in China have been locked down or with strict community management, labors spreading all over the countries have difficulties returning their position, leading to further impacts on the industry. (Image: Pixabay) Despite that many companies in China began to work remotely since last week, on-site operation still requires labors to go back to the factories. Since the infection has yet to be controlled, large ga...

Pioneer Smart Sensing Innovations (PSSI), the subsidiary of Pioneer focuses LiDAR sensors, announced its partnership with eMoovit, a company incorporated abroad in Malaysia of MooVita, for a 5G autonomous driving demonstration taking place in Malaysia from January 2020. This demonstration is done as a part of “5G Demonstration Project” which is convened in six states of the country by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, and verify for autonomous driving through 5G in partnership with Altel. The autonomous vehicle in the form of a...

LED lighting solution provider Orion Lighting reported results of the third quarter of its fiscal 2020 ended December 31, 2019. Orion lighting registered a revenue of US$34 million for the quarter, which increased by 110%, compared to the same period last year. The company said that the strong growth came from a large turnkey LED lighting retrofit contract for a major national account. Gross profit also grew by 98% YoY to US$8.3 million for a gross margin of 24.2%. EBITDA rose to US$2.8 million in fiscal 3Q20 and US$14.7 million for the first 9 months of fisca...

LG Electronics announced two days in a row that it will withdraw exhibition and participation from Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2020 and Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2020 due to coronavirus outbreak. LG made the decision concerning the safety of its employees as the World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak as a global emergency and the virus continue to spread outside China. Participation of these events will require hundreds of LG employees to travel internationally which has already become more restrictive since the virus sprea...

British Micro LED expert Plessey continues to expand partnerships with other industry players to accelerate Micro LED development. The company reported its collaboration with Axus Technology (Axus), a global provider of CMP, wafer thinning and wafer polishing surface-processing solutions for semiconductor applications, to bring high-performance GaN-on-Silicon monolithic Micro LED technology to the mass market. (Image: Plessey) Plessey continues to invest heavily in its manufacturing facility to boost Micro LED display capabilities with the purchase of met...

Japan’s Panasonic Corporation announced that it has entered into a share transfer agreement with Munich-based Fidelium Partners, under which all shares of Panasonic Lighting Europe, which focuses on the lighting device business in Europe as a wholly owned consolidated subsidiary of Panasonic, will be transferred to the German investment firm. Panasonic acquired German lighting device manufacturer Vossloh Schwabe in August 2002 to expand its lighting device business in Europe and worked to strengthen sales of lighting devices for conventional light sources such as f...

Acuva Technologies announced the closing of a US$5.4 million growth financing with a syndicate of existing and new investors to deliver the Company's innovative drinking water purification systems to global consumers. The proceeds of the financing will be used to meet the rapidly growing demand for Acuva's proprietary products in global markets and to fund the growth of the Company's teams both in Canada and abroad. Acuva has established global leadership is UV-LED disinfection technology and secured partnerships with several major international Original Eq...

UVphotonics and Ferdinand-Braun-Institut (FBH) are presenting novel UV LED developments with emission wavelengths from 330 nm to as low as 230 nm at Photonics West 2020. The versatile light sources are configurable to various application requirements. UV LEDs have opened up new prospects due to benefits like increased design flexibility, energy savings and reduced overall cost. Their customizable wavelengths, low operation voltages, ability to be rapidly switched and dimmed along with their compact size make them ideal for a multitude of applications. These include ...

After a year of ups and downs, Osram announced that it has kicked off its 2020 with slightly grown revenue and profit for the first quarter of its fiscal year. Osram posted a revenue of EUR 873 million (US$ 960.78 million) with 0.5% on-year growth. Its Adjusted EBITDA increased by 22% YoY to EUR 114 million (US$ 125.46 million). The adjusted EBITDA margin also climbed 2 percentage points to 13%. Business segment Opto Semiconductors performed stably with revenue amounted EUR 359 million (US$ 395 million). In the segment Digital, revenues climbed...

Cepton Technologies announced that it has raised over US$50 million in Series C funding. This brings Cepton’s total funding to nearly US$100 million, providing a strong foundation to substantially ramp up its R&D efforts, expand its footprint in the automotive market and support major customers worldwide. The latest funding round was led by automotive lighting system developer Koito, the automotive Tier 1 and world-leading provider of automotive lighting systems. As part of the transaction, Koito will obtain non-exclusive rights to manufacture and sell Cepton&r...

Coronavirus outbroke in China before Lunar New Year and led to the delay of operation resume in many cities. Chinese authorities have announced to postpone the working day until February 2 and February 10 and Wubei province, which most impacted by the novel coronavirus, will be back to work after February 14. As the global production center of LED, China’s decisions on workday delay and city seal-off are bringing impacts to the LED supply chain. LEDinside learned that most of the LED industry players in China are expected to be back to operation on February...

Cree published the financial results for the second quarter of its Fiscal 2020 which ended December 29, 2019. The company registered revenues of US$239.9 million for the quarter which decreased by 14% YoY and 1% QoQ. GAAP net loss from continuing operations attributable to controlling interest for the second quarter was US$52.8 million. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss from continuing operations attributable to controlling interest for the second quarter of fiscal 2020 was $10.4 million. GAAP and non-GAAP net losses from continuing operations attributable to c...

CEA-Leti announced at Photonics West 2020 its new development of a silicon nitride (Si3N4) 200mm platform for developing photonics in UV through mid-infrared wavelengths. Available in CEA-Leti's SiN platform in a multi-project-wafer program, the breakthrough targets designers in integrated quantum optics, LiDAR, biosensing, and imaging whose projects require ultralow propagation losses and high-power handling capability. (Image: CEA-Leti) According to CEA-Leti, this ultralow-loss SiN layer is available for multi-level photonic circuits. It can be c...

UK-based Micro LED technology developer Plessey announced at Photonics West its’ new partnership with WaveOptics, a designer and manufacturer of diffractive waveguides. (Image: WaveOptics/Plessey) This two companies aim to create a new optical module for next generation smart glasses incorporating Plessey’s native green Micro LED full HD display with WaveOptics’ Katana waveguide technology and projector design. The full HD Micro LED display from Plessey is the result of its previously announced partnership with Compound Photonics, t...

Fluence by OSRAM is expanding its business in Europe and announced the partnership with growers and other horticulture specialists in Papenburg, the Emsland region of Germany. Given Papenburg’s decades-long history of attracting horticulture experts, Fluence’s innovative lighting solutions for horticulture are a natural fit for the region’s tomato, cucumber, leafy greens and herb growers. Elektro Evers, an engineering firm specializing in greenhouse technology, is Fluence’s exclusive systems integrator in the Papenburg region. Elektro Evers as...

Signify published its fourth quarter and full-year 2019 financial results on January 31. The Dutch company reported full-year sales of EUR 6.2 billion (US$ 6.87 billion) which decreased by 4.6% YoY decrease but improved in profitability by 30bps to 10.4%. Its LED-based sales grew by 1.4%YoY, representing 78% of its sales. For 4Q19, Signify, registered sales for EUR 1.75 billion (US$ 1.94 billion) which improved by 1.4% compared to 4Q18. The adjusted gross margin increased by 30 bps to 37.8%, including a positive currency effect of 30 bps. Adjusted EBITA am...

The ZKW Group, which was acquired by LG Electronics in 2018, announced that it has established a branch in Incheon, Korea in December 2019, with the integration with the rear light business of LG Electronics. The company also integrated the rear light production of LG Electronics in Ningbo, China. These new locations are added with the aim to further expand business in the Korean automotive market and the Asia-Pacific region. (Image: ZKW) At the time ZKW was acquired by LG in 2018, it was already agreed that the “Exterior Lighting for Automoti...

University of Sheffield in the UK announced the launch of its new spin-out company focusing on Micro LED technology on January 31, 2020. The company, named EpiPix is developing and commercializing Micro LED technology for photonics applications covering AR/VR wearable devices, 3D sensing and LiFi. A research team of the university recently published a new manufacture method to develop green InGaN Micro LED. The research team leader, Professor Tao Wang at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and th...