Taiwanese LED chip maker Epistar in 2017 went through a financial turnaround and reported a share dividend of NTD 0.8. In wake of lukewarm market demand, the company’s 2Q18 results showed declinces. Its plan to mass produce Mini LED products is scheduled in the second half of 2018.

LG Electronics said Wednesday (May 9) its latest OLED TVs released in the United States come with features that allow them to be connected to the Google Assistant voice recognition system.

While more companies join in the development of Micro LED, only a few are able to manufacture RGB Micro LED chips. Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn is reported to acquire shares of Epileds, a Taiwan-based LED wafer and chip maker, from Catcher Technology, specialized in light metal technology and originally a shareholder of Epileds.

Tuya Smart, a China-based global AI/IoT platform company, is expanding its business with the opening of a U.S. sales and R&D office in Silicon Valley. The company is bringing its one-stop shop solution to device manufacturers so that any standard ‘dumb’ device can be transformed into a smart one, ready for production in less than two weeks.

On May 7, 2018, Epistar filed a patent infringement lawsuit against V-TAC USA Corp. (“V-TAC”) in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on May 7, 2018. The complaint asserts that V-TAC’s LED filament bulbs infringe seven Epistar patents and seeks injunctive relief to halt further sale of the infringing products.

Epistar yesterday announced it has agreed with Kaistar Lighting on the licensing of LED filament patents. The LED filament bulb products manufactured by Kaistar and its subsidiaries (including Bridgelux, SINOTRON Lighting, and Interlight Optotech) are licensed under Epistar’s filament patents.

As a popular product in the LED display industry, Micro LED is regarded as a leader of next-generation display technology. A large number of manufacturers at home and abroad have paid attention to Micro LED, which has promising market prospects.

According to TrendForce’s latest report New Display Technology Cost Analysis, Micro LED has emerged as the most discussed topic in the display industry. The capital market and the supply chain are all looking forward to this next-generation display technology. However, from the technical perspective, the mass production of Micro LED still face many challenges, including the yield rate of mass transfer and LED uniformity, etc. Some manufacturers have thus shifted their development focus to Mini LED, whose architecture is similar to that of current LCD and LED displays. No major change in the design is needed. Commercialization of Mini LED is only a matter of time, therefore, companies are all expecting it to become a transitional product before Micro LED is ready for mass production.

Philips Lighting announced that it has repurchased 154,000 shares in the period May 2, 2018 to May 4, 2018. The shares were repurchased at an average price of EUR 26.54 per share and an aggregate amount of EUR 4.09 million.

Universal Display Corporation reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2018. It also announced that its Board of Directors approved a second quarter cash dividend of $0.06 per share on the Company's common stock.

The LED lighting industry has seen a paradigm shift, propelled by the exponential urban expansion expected over the next decade and the drive towards ever bigger energy efficiency.

As time is moving forward to the second quarter of 2018, more and more rumblings and updates about Micro/Mini LED emerged and have been circulating in the industry. In February, LEDinside collected and revealed information of Micro LED development from nearly 50 companies around the globe. Here, we would like to share some progress updates released after that from 10 companies.

According to the latest report of LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, while conventional LED components are used for backlight, Micro LED and Mini LED technology have been gradually used for self-emitting in displays of consumer electronics. Every LED will then stand for a pixel, increasing the number of LED wafers used.

Osram is taking the next step in its development of intelligent plant growth solutions by acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. Fluence specializes in LED-based horticultural systems, using Osram LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban areas. Potential crops range from salad greens and herbs to medicinal plants. Osram and Fluence have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

General LED Holdings, LLC (“General LED”) announced it completed the acquisition of the Acolyte Group (“Acolyte”), a New York based provider of fully-integrated LED lighting systems. Acolyte offers ribbon lighting and other architectural lighting products for a variety of indoor and outdoor applications.

With the development of display technology, the panel industry will no longer only focus on the supply and demand. Instead, more emphasis has been placed on the quality and specs upgrade of panels in order to increase the value of display products. This trend has motivated the display panel makers towards better specs, such as high resolution, curved, ultra-thin, lightweight, bendable, high dynamic HDR, high contrast, and wide color gamut. In this way, the displays will be able to present more natural colors and vivid image.

In recent year, Mini LED has undoubtedly emerged as a new sector where LED companies and panel vendors actively enter. The reason is that the traditional LED backlight has been developing for many years, reaching a bottleneck in technology; the profit is relatively low as well. Meanwhile, OLED displays, which feature thinness and flexibility, are invading into the backlight display market. As the result, manufacturers that do not worked on OLED displays have turned to the development of Mini LED, a new product that is highly competitive in terms of function and cost.

Osram has added to its expertise in semiconductor-based optical security technology by acquiring US-based Vixar Inc. Already a technology leader in infrared LEDs and infrared laser diodes, Osram will have a unique breadth of technological expertise and an expanded product portfolio after bringing on board Vixar’s specialist capabilities in the field of VCSEL.

“The first half of the fiscal year was challenging due to various factors. However, the long-term growth trend remains intact, while the reorganization and the technological shift are continuing,” said Olaf Berlien, CEO of OSRAM Licht AG.

AIXTRON SE will deliver high-end MOCVD technology to long-standing customer Visual Photonics Epitaxy Co. Ltd. (VPEC). The Taiwanese semiconductor foundry, mainly specialized in solutions for wireless and optical device epi wafers, plans to ramp-up its epitaxy production with multiple AIX 2800G4 MOCVD cluster systems to meet the globally growing demand for various photonic and electronic applications.

Molex announced the expansion of its design portfolio of Molex PoE-Ready products, with the addition of Deco Lighting’s PoE-Ready Vector 2 LED light fixtures.

Philips Lighting announced the start of a program to repurchase up to 1.5 million of its own shares. Philips Lighting will use the shares to cover obligations arising from its long-term incentive performance share plan and other employee share plans.

Seoul Semiconductor on April 30 announced consolidated first-quarter revenues of Korean won (KrW) 283.0 billion (USD 263 million). The rise in consolidated revenue came from strong sales in general lighting, especially from the automotive lighting segment and strength across all application segments, with the IT division delivering high single digit growth YoY. The results fall within the company’s guided KrW 270 billion and KrW 290 billion for the quarter.

Major Chinese LED package supplier MLS teams up with Taiwanese auto lamp manufacturers to develop automotive lighting. Targets of its early stage development are aftermarkets of rear lamp and turn signal in Taiwan.

Samsung Electronics on April 25 kicked off its Onyx LED cinema screen brand, which aims to deliver deep and realistic black colors to enhance the viewing experience of moviegoers.

LG Electronics announced Monday that it plans to bolster its LED lighting product portfolio by introducing products that emit less blue light and are thus easier on the human eye.

The “blue light” emitted by street lights including LEDs, and commercial outdoor lighting such as advertising, is linked to a significant increase in the risk of breast and prostate cancer, innovative new research has concluded.

At TILS 2018, ITRI showcased applications including flexible OLED technology, an Energy Dome, and smart LED lighting able to detect failures. These applications offer insight into a next-generation lighting environment and highlight innovative LED and OLED technologies.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a Taiwan-based technology R&D institution, displayed innovative OLED and LED lighting applications at 2018 Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS) between April 25th and 28th.

As a regular exhibitor at TILS 2018, LED cooling system provider MechaTronix this time share with LEDinside a few trends it spotted in the horticultural lighting market.