ams announced its cooperation with Face++, a Chinese AI software developer, to accelerate OEMs’ and system integrators’ deployments of 3D optical sensing technologies such as face recognition. According to ams, the partnership with Face++ will enable manufacturers to bring facial recognition and other systems to market faster including functions like facial payments, Animoji creation and augmented/virtual reality. The 3D optical sensing solutions created by ams and Face++ use infrared light projectors to map the surface of real-world objects such as a user’...

ams, the Austria-based Apple supplier, has announced the release of its new sensing component which can measure ambient light from behind an OLED screen. The newly launched RGB light and IR proximity sensor IC, TCS3701, is featured with behind-screen light measuring ability. The capability supports today’s industrial design trend to maximize smartphone display area by eliminating front-facing bezels, where an ambient light/proximity sensor is typically located. With the new sensor, the next iPhone could be notch-free. (Image: ams) According to ams, it has...

Autonomous driving is one of the featured technologies at CES 2019. Automobile manufacturers, LiDAR developers as well as sensing components providers have all prepared to join the high profile event with their cutting-edge technologies. LEDinside has selected some noticeable exhibitors who are showcasing the next generation technology for autonomous driving applications. Velodyne Lidar Velodyne continues to present new products for CES 2019. Last week the company released that it will demonstrate Velodyne Alpha Puck™ and Velodyne Velarray™, sensors ma...

Vertically integrated LED company Lextar announced a revenue of NT$ 715 million (US$ 23.2 million) for December 2018 with a decrease of 13% MoM and 17% YoY. The company’s revenue of 2018 was NT$ 11 billion (US$ 357 million) with an on-year decrease of 8.2%. Lextar has drastically reduced its general lighting business in 2018 and focused on new opto-semiconductor technology development with the aim to boost its profit. The company has targeted four fields including displays, professional lighting, automotive applications and sensing technologies. Mini LED...

Razer, the gaming peripherals provider which is famous for its LED-encrusted keyboard, has step into the automotive business with its Chroma lighting integrated in cars through the partnership with Leap Motor, a Chinese electric car startup. On January 3rd, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan announced on his Instagram that the company has teamed up with Leap Motor for adopting its Chroma lighting to automotive applications. He said, “Razer Chroma is the world's largest RGB platform and I'm excited to announce that Leapmotor, the hot electric car startup fro...

Plessey Semiconductors announced that it has worked with Nanoco Technologies, the UK-based cadmium-free quantum dot (CFQD) provider to shrink the pixel size of monolithic Micro LED displays. By combining Nanoco’s CFQD semiconductor nanoparticle technology and its existing monolithic process, Plessey will integrate the quantum dots into selected regions of blue LED wafers to add red and green light. The process could shrink the practical pixel size by 87 percent, from today’s 30µm to 4µm. The advance enables the production of smaller Micro...

LEDinside illustrated the global car sales situation in 2018 and explained how the US-China trade war has impacted the automobile market and indirectly influenced the automotive LED market in the past year. In the second part of the analysis, we will further discuss the application trends of automotive LED as well as the global industrial chain of automotive LED. Mainstream automotive LED application trends The automotive LEDs are adopted in various places in cars including interior and exterior lighting, dashboards and rear view mirrors. Headlights as the m...

As a niche application with high profit, automotive LED lighting has been under the spotlight of many LED manufacturers. With 2019 starting, LEDinside would like to share some insights of the market trend on automotive LED. Global vehicle sales slows down due to the US-China disputes In the first half of 2018, car sales had slowly grown as the global economy was relatively stable. However, as the extra tariffs imposed by the Trump government came to effect in July, the on-going US-China dispute has created uncertainty in the global market and affected the sales...

The South Korean government is planning to designate OLED equipment as the core technology of the country and restrict the export to prevent technology leaks, reported BusinessKorea, a South Korean media. The report mentioned that the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) of South Korea and display equipment companies have held a meeting on December 30th to discuss the designation of OLED equipment as national core technology. Once it becomes national core technology, the technology's export and business merger and acquisition (M&A) will hav...

Everlight reported that it will continue to guard it’s the rights of the company and its customers in response to Seoul Semiconductor’s victory announcement about the patent infringement lawsuit in Germany. In December, Seoul Semiconductor has reported that it won the lawsuit in Germany which was filed in March 2017. Seoul Semiconductor accused Mouser Electronic of distributing Everlight’s LED products that infringed a patent of Seoul Semiconductor. The German Court judged in favor of Seoul Semiconductor and ordered to recall the accused products...

There have been ups and downs in the LED industry in 2018. New technologies have continued to evolve while many leading industry players have made critical decisions to cut off old business. LEDinside has selected some significant updates of the influential companies in the industry to wrap up the year. Philips Lighting becomes Signify As one of the most famous lighting brands in the world, Philips Lighting officially changed its name to Signify in 2018. The company announced the name change plan as a gesture to transform the company. It has started to use the new na...

Horticulture lighting applications have become a critical market for the LED industry. LED lighting enables researchers and growers to break the limitation of conventional farming regarding the weather and space. With the help of LED lighting, innovative horticultural researches and activities were reported from all around the world. Various cultivation methods were developed to grow crops in places that we would not consider possible in the past. With the end of the year approaching, let’s look back at how scientists and industry innovators have used LED lighting to...

2018 has been a tough year for panel producers due to the dropping panel price caused by oversupply. Chinese panel makers are still expanding their production capacities for LCD and OLED displays, putting pressures on other industry players. Samsung is closing its 8.5 generation production line in 2019 and shifting the focus to QD-OLED panels in response to the price competition. LG Display also plans to expand its OLED production capacities in China and Korea targeting large sized TV displays. It is estimated that by 2020, the OLED investment of LG Displ...

Sweden-based Fagerhult announced on December 21 that it has signed an agreement to acquire iGuzzini, the Italian lighting group for EUR 385 million (US$ 439 million). According to Fagerhult, the price of EUR 385 million will be paid with 74 percent in cash and 26 percent in new Fagerhult shares. The transaction is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2019. With iGuzzini joining the Fagerhult Group will, the largest lighting company in the Nordic countries will increase its presence in Italy, Switzerland, Spain and North America. The combined compan...

Unilumin Group, a Chinese LED application supplier, has collaborated with Maverick AV Solutions for expanding the market penetration of LED fine pitch displays in Europe. Unilumin manufacturers LED products ranging from 0.9mm to 12mm pixel pitch. The company also operates in a variety of verticals including command and control rooms, broadcast studios, corporate atria, meeting spaces and digital signage. With the partnership with Maverick AV Solutions, Unilumin is going to increase its presence in the European market. The Maverick team will push the LED prod...

Macroblock, the LED driver IC supplier, announced that it has broken through the production bottleneck of Mini LED products and expects to begin volume manufacturing in 1Q19. According to Macroblock, its flip-chip Mini LED performs better in luminous efficacy, heat dissipation and light distribution uniformity compared to the conventional package method. The company said that it has solved the production difficulties of Mini LED products with a production yield rate of 99.99 percent. Macroblock’s driver IC was adopted by Samsung for its LED cinem...

Bowery Farming, an indoor autonomous farming startup from New York, has raised US$ 90 million in Series B funding from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures). and CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi. The company began operating in February 2017 and has opened two vertical farming facilities near New York since then. Bowery Farming applies technologies including robotics, machine learning and predictive analytics to autonomously operate the growing conditions for the crops. Vegetables are grown with controlled environment with optimized LED lighting spectr...

Velodyne Lidar announced its collaboration with Nikon as the optical technology company invests US$ 25 million in Velodyne. The two companies have begun discussions for a multifaceted business alliance. The purpose of the strategic partnership is to combine Nikon’s optical and precision technologies with Velodyne’s sensor technology. According to Velodyne, the relationship aims to advance the timeline for manufacturing and mass production of LiDAR for the autonomous and advanced safety global market. The parties have begun investigating a wide-ranging business...

Having looked back at the industry updates of Micro LED technology, let’s keep on reviewing the technology breakthroughs of Micro LED in the past year. KAIST Team Develops Flexible Vertical Micro LED to Cure Hair loss Problem In January, a researcher team at KAIST announced the development of flexible vertical micro LEDs (f-VLEDs). These f-VLEDs achieved optical power density (30 mW/mm2) three times higher than that of lateral Micro LEDs and can be applied to optogenetics for controlling the behavior of neuron cells and brains with...

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...