German company TRUMPF is going to acquire Philips Photonics, the VCSEL production units of Royal Philips, to expand its product portfolio for 3D sensing and data transmission applications. Back in November Philips Photonics announced a milestone of shipping one billion VCSELs and soon after that the company was said to have increased the capacity of VCSEL production in Ulm, Germany. And now it is selling 100 percent of the operation to TRUMPF. The two companies are planning to finish the operation transaction by the second quarter of 2019 and neith...

For the LED and panel industry, the year of 2018 had a dramatic start with Samsung’s revealing of its Micro LED TV “The Wall” at the CES show. Since then, players in the industry have been releasing their achievements related to the next generation display technology. Several innovative solutions and applications have been disclosed in the past year including large size displays and wearable devices. As LEDinside has continued to track the progress of Micro LED development, we would like to list the significant breakthroughs and industry updates...

Taiwan-based optical disc maker RITEK announced that its subsidiary, RiTdisplay and Luminit, a light sharping diffuser supplier in the U.S., are going to set up a joint venture in Taiwan focusing on automotive lighting. The RITEK group began its business in optical disc production and has expanded its operation to storage media, nano-technology, OLED displays and others. RiTdisplay is the subsidiary of RITEK which focuses on OLED development and production. On the other hand, Luminit specializes in light sharping technology for lighting, display, automot...

By the end of last month, Bloomberg reported that Bain Capital, a U.S.-based private equity firm, has been eyeing a buyout of Osram. Soon after that, another private equity company, Carlyle, reportedly joined the list of potential bidders for the German lighting technology group, according to Financial Times. The report of Financial Times noted that two people directly involved in the situation have confirmed Carlyle’s interest in the buyout of Osram. But neither Carlyle nor Osram commented on the information. (Image: Osram) Osram has been through a fina...

Nichia and Seoul Semiconductor, the two LED manufacturers in Japan and South Korea, have respectively reported updates regarding their intellectual property issues with the Taiwan-based company, Everlight. Nichia has confirmed its YAG patent in Germany as Everlight and its German subsidiary WOFI have withdrawn their appeal in November. The Japanese company then requested Everlight and WOFI to provide the rendering account information for related white LED products. Nichia is going to request compensation for the patent infringement from Everlight based o...

The U.S.-based LED giant Cree has adjusted its management team. After the new CFO and chairman were appointed and the new members of the board of directors were elected in the six months, the head of the LED division has stepped down, reported Triangle Business Journal. The executive vice president and general manager of Cree’s LED business unit, David Emerson, has left the position. Claude Demby, formerly senior vice president of strategy and corporate development, took over the duty. (Image: Cree) The company has been through a shuffle in the sen...

Osram announced that it is providing several of its components for automotive lighting and biometric identification solutions for microSNAP, Rinspeed’s concept vehicle, which will be presented at CES 2019. Rinspeed’s microSNAP is the latest version of the company’s autonomous concept car which has a chassis to contain the drivetrain and most of the IT while connecting to various body types. (Image: Osram) Outside the vehicle, microSNAP uses Osram’s Eviyos, a hybrid LED for smart headlights, which contains individually controlled pi...

Japan Display Inc. (JDI) has been negotiating with Chinese companies and investors to receive financial supports of JPY 50 billion (US$ 440.65 million), reported NHK. The potential investors include mobile component producer Ofilm, automotive component manufacturer Minth Group and the Silk Road Fund. With the support, the Chinese investors will hold 33 percent or more of the share of JDI, suppressing the current major shareholder INCJ, who owns 25.29 percent of the share. In addition to the investment, the Chinese investors were also reportedly offering a ...

Plessey, the UK-based optoelectronic technology solutions provider, announced that it is going to demonstrate AR and VR glasses powered by Micro LEDs at CES 2019. Plessey’s Micro LEDs are put in action for AR applications with Vuzix, who has collaborated with Plessy in the development of Micro LED smart glasses. According to Plessey, its Micro LEDs offer 10 times the resolution, 100 times the contrast ratio, and up to 1,000 times the luminance compared to traditional OLEDs. Furthermore, the device uses only half the power consumption, doubling b...

The “Micro LED Technology Research Contest” held by LEDinside has received numerous articles providing innovative and practical solutions to enhance the manufacturing of Micro LED during June 6th – September 10th, 2018. LEDinside was very excited to learn all these novel ideas and technologies offered by different institutes and companies from all over the world. Selecting the winning articles was a tough task as most of them have proposed unique perspectives on how to solve the mass transfer issue of Micro LED or improve their yield rate. 

According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, the glut ratio of panels is expected to increase to 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, leading to a drop in panel price. Facing the difficulties of the oversupply and decreased price, panel producers have shifted their focus to niche applications in order to break through the low price competition. Innolux has developed a high resolution sickness-free VR headset which won an innovative product award. The company aims to expand its presence in the growing gaming market with its VR headset and expects to mass produce the pr...

With its continuous development in Mini LED, Harvatek projects that Mini LED products will take around 15 percent of its revenue next year, driving its business performance in 2019. The LED manufacturer focuses on display products including notebooks, gaming monitors, mobile devices and automotive displays. The shipment of its Mini LED product, 4 in 1 Mini COB and RGB Mini LED COB, has been processed by its display clients. Harvatek expects that its Mini LED product shipments will be boosted by the second quarter of 2019, bringing profits to the com...

Samsung Electronics announced that it will close its smartphone manufacturing plants in Tianjin, China, due to the declining sales of its smartphone in the Chinese market. According to the report of Reuters, the operation of Samsung’s smartphone manufacturing in the Tianjin plant will stop by the end of year. But the company will continue the production in Huizhou. Samsung has shifted its production facilities to India and Vietnam not only because its sales in China dropped but also due to the increasing production cost. Electronic Times, a South Korean media...

WaveOptics is a UK-based Augmented Reality (AR) wearable device designer and manufacturer with its diffractive waveguides technology. The company announced that it has raised US$26 million from existing shareholders and new investors. One of its new investor, Goertek, has also signed an exclusive waveguide production partnership with WaveOptics. Goertek designs and produces high-tech consumer electronics. With the partnership with WaveOpics, the two companies aim to mass produce Waveguides’s waveguides for AR wearable applications (Image: WaveOptics) W...

LED manufacturers reported revenue drop for November as the demands decrease in the off-peak season. AOT, the LED company under the Foxconn Group, has posted a revenue of NT$ 332 million (US$ 10.76 million) for November with a decrease of 10.4% MoM and 39.9% YoY. LED backlighting is the major business of the company which accounts for more than 90 percent of its revenue. Therefore, the dropped demands of TV backlight due to seasonality led to the decreased monthly revenue of AOT. (Image: AOT) AOT also began the development of Mini and Micro LE...

Selectronic, a UK-based specialist, has partnered with Chinese LED packager Hongli Zhuihui with a US$ 75 million collaboration agreement. The two companies will work with Taiwanese company Epistar to boost LED automotive product development. Selectronic is a distributor of LEDs in Europe for Hongli. Through the partnership with Epistar, Hongli will buy Epistar’s patented automotive LED chips for the production of automotive LED lighting and the development of automotive LED products. The strategic agreement between the companies will run until O...

A research team in Taiwan announced that its development of OLED lighting is ready for commercial production. According to the research leader, Dr. Jwo-Huei Jou at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan, the team has developed OLED lighting that is similar to candle light which produces softer light source and does not cause harm to the human eye. (Image: ITRI) The OLED research team of NTHU worked with Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories at ITRI and WiseChip Semiconductor in the development of low color t...

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com, has opened a plant factory adopting hydroponic technology provided by Mitsubishi Chemical to supply fresh food for its online and offline customers. Through the strategic collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical, JD.com plans to increase its capability of food production in order to control and monitor the quality of its food products. The company aims to set up to 10 plant factories in China. The newly built facility locates in the Tongzhou District of Beijing and is expected to produce 300 tons of vegetable annually with its 11,040 square...

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has been one of the technology focuses in the past two years as it is a key technology for automotive vehicles and many other applications. According to “2018 Infrared Sensing Application Market Report” by LEDinside, the market value of LiDAR laser is expected to reach US$ 154 million in 2020. Worldwide LiDAR sensor producers and semiconductor firms have been pushing LiDAR development and extending applications through collaboration with other technology partners. Apart from self-driving technology, LiDAR ...

With the cooperation with INOX Leisure, an India multiplex chain, Samsung has announced that its Cinema LED, Onyx, has launched in Mumbai, the land of Bollywood. Samsung has announced its partnership with PVR Cinemas in August to launch the first Onyx Cinema LED displays in New Delhi. Working with INOX, Samsung now debut the second LED cinema screen in Mumbai. The company plans to install around 20 LED cinema displays all over India by the end of 2019. (Image: Samsung India) “With INOX Onyx, welcome true colors, bring alive t...

LEDVANCE announced that the company will change its manufacturing structure for increasing the integration with its parent company MLS while intensifying the competitiveness of the company in the U.S. and Canada. Meanwhile, LEDVANCE also revealed that its factory in Versailles which produces conventional lighting fixtures will be closed. LEDVANCE has been shifting its production focus from traditional lamps to smart lighting products in the past few years. The acquisition of MLS, the Chinese LED lighting producer, in 2017 has accelerated the transfo...

WitsView, a division of TrendForce, released the latest report for gaming monitors (with a frame rate above 100Hz), noting that the shipments of gaming monitors would reach 5.1 million units in 2018 with an annual growth of 100 percent. The gaming market has been expanding in recent years with promotions such as gaming sport, bringing growing momentum to the PC industry and boosting the demands for high quality monitors. Many LCD monitor makers have entered the gaming monitor market which has high gross margins. In the global shipment ranking of gaming monitor makers, AS...

The fourth quarter is usually the off-peak season for the LED market. Industry players including Lextar and Macroblock have reported lukewarm business performance in November and are expecting growth in 2019 with the booming Mini LED market. Lextar posted its monthly revenue of NT$ 823 million (US$ 26.67 million) for November with a decrease of 6.5% MoM and 7.8% YoY. The company has continued its product shipments including Mini LED backlights, Mini LED RGB modules, fine-pitch displays and VCSEL packages. Meanwhile, it also focuses on further tech...

Apple has applied a patent related to optoelectronics devices for improving LiDAR sensors and applications, reported Patently Apple. The report said that Apple noted the demands for applications using 3D sensing and imaging systems and proposed enhanced technologies to integrate LiDAR and VCSEL for advanced 3D image technology. The new patent introduce a method to combine different types of light source and laser array such as diffractive optical elements or VCSEL to develop improved 3D image devices for various applications. (Image: Apple) Patently Ap...

The LED industry has been involved in the trade war between the United States and China as LED components and related lighting products were included in the list of extra tariffs. LEDinside has been tracking the impacts of the trade war, which is believed to have led to the aggravation of oversupply in the LED industry. The two countries have recently reached a trade truce by suspending the new tariffs for 90 days. However, LEDinside believes that the delay would bring increased uncertainty into the LED industry. Figo Wang, senior analyst of LEDinside, pointed...

Idemitsu Kosan announces that it will build a facility for OLED material manufacturing in Chengdu, China in order to accommodate the growing demand for OLED materials in China and to enhance technical support to Chinese customers. Idemitsu Kosan aims to expand its OLED production in China targeting the increasing Chinese market for OLED applications. The company will construct its third OLED material plant in China after its factory in Japan and Korea. The construction is expected to be completed in November 2019 and the commercial production is schedul...

DigiLens, a U.S.-based HUD device developer, announced that it has received an investment from AR software company Niantic and Diamond Edge Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation (MCHC) in its Series C funding round. With the investment, DigiLens will continue its development in holographic AR displays for automobile, consumer and other applications. With its technology in holographic waveguide displays, DigiLens provides proprietary nanomaterials and core technologies for AR displays. The company aims to create...

VPED (Visual Photonics Epitaxy Co. Ltd), a Taiwan-based GaAs wafer producer, announced that the company expects growth momentum from the applications of VCSEL and will begin to ship small volumes of 5G products next year. As the smartphone market has passed its peak phase, semiconductor suppliers are looking forward to the applications of IoT and 5G. However, the development of these fields has just begun, bringing limited momentum to the industry. As result, the growth of VPED would still come from VCSEL applications including 3D facial recognition and L...

VividGro, the horticultural LED division of Lighting Science, announced that it has built partnerships with U.S. suppliers to domestically produce LED fixtures with cost-effective solutions and has moved back its manufacturing lines back to the U.S. since the beginning of 2018. VividGro has relocated its production and assembly of all of its product lines in Rockledge, Florida, since the first quarter of 2018. Through strategic partnerships with domestic suppliers, the company has minimized its overseas sourcing and managed to create local job opportunities with its pro...

NEC announced that it will remove the lighting business from its group and sell its lighting subsidiary, NEC Lighting, to a new company founded by Japan Mirai Capital on April 1st, 2019. According to the announcement of NEC, the intense price competition in the LED lighting market has led to deficit of its lighting business in the recent ten years. Therefore, NEC decided to withdraw the lighting business which the company has been running for more than six decades. (Image: pixabay) NEC began to produce fluorescent light since 1952 and established NEC Li...