On October 30th, a patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Apple for its “Exterior Lighting and Warning System” which uses a lighting system to indicate warnings and information from the outside of a car, reported Appleinsider.

LG and Samsung have been competing in the field of display, showcasing their novel display technology in international fairs one after another. Samsung revealed “the Wall,” the 146-inch Micro LED modular TV at the CES event in the beginning of the year and by the end of August, LG introduced its 173-inch Micro LED TV at the IFA. Aside from Micro LED, the two companies also fought against each other in the high-end TV market by releasing large sized OLED TVs. The two Korean electronics giants have both revealed their financial results fo...

GCS Holdings reported that it has delivered its VCSEL sample products to clients in the U.S. including Google and Facebook for data transmitting applications. The validation of the products would be completed soon and mass production and shipment will start next year, reported Economic Daily News, a Taiwanese media. According to the report, GCS has provided its receiver (Rx) radio frequency (RF) for Facebook and it will begin to supply the transmitter products from next year. 3D sensing has been the field most of the VCSEL companies focus on. To differenti...

Lite-On Technology has announced capital increase in its subsidiaries in Vietnam and Jordan for expanding production capacities outside China. The total amount of the investment is US$ 97 million

Vertical integrated LED company Lextar is going to announce its I-Mini Square module for automotive tail lamp application. Adopted with Lextar’s latest Mini LED technology, this automotive module can display dynamic images with RGB full color screens. Lextar will debut its concept of application at the biannual Electronica 2018 held in Munich from November 13th to 16th. According to the company,

LiDAR technology developers Quanergy and Innovusion have respectively received funding for their technology development and products production.

Researchers at KAIST have achieved high efficiency with OLED without using macroscopic lens. They used an external scattering medium to achieve an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of more than 50 percent in OLED stimulation. The research, led by Professor Seunghyup Yoo and PhD candidate Jinouk Song, was published in Nature Communications on August 10th, 2018. 

Many LED manufacturers have been pushing their development in Mini LED, hoping to target niche markets with high-margin products as the oversupply and price competition in the industry have continued. Taiwan-based LED chip producer Epistar is an active player in developing Mini LED technology and has restructured its organization to strengthen its Mini LED business.

Automotive LED light supplier Excellence Optoelectronics Inc (EOI) has reported its continuous yearly growth in the past three quarters of 2018 and announced that it plans to develop Mini LED and Micro LED displays for automotive applications and larger size displays. (Image: EOI) EOI has supplied its Flexible Uniflex rear lamp module and LED light sources for the center high-mounted stop lamp (CHMSL) for Tesla Model 3. Currently it ships 5000-6000 units per week for Tesla Model 3 and the company is looking forward to increasing the shipment. Si...

The Chinese government has launched new policies to reduce the impacts of the U.S. tariffs on Chinese exporters. One of them is to raise duty drawback rates for the exported products. The policy will become effective on November 1st, 2018.

Chinese LED driver manufacturer Inventronics has announced its plan to set up a subsidiary in Mexico with Osmanthus Holding Limited to expand its operations in the market of America and meet the requirements of local production for its clients.

DRAM supplier Apacer is going showcase its lighting inspection solutions targeting horticulture and agricultural lighting at Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) from October 27th to 30th, 2018.

Signify has reported its results for the third quarter of 2018. The sales for 3Q18 came to EUR 1.6 billion (US$ 1.82 billion), with an on-year drop of 5.3 percent. The sales of LED-based products represented 70% of total sales and grew by 0.1% compared to 3Q17. Its net income was EUR 93 million (US$ 105.85 million), which dropped by 15.1% YoY.

In response to Nichia’s announcement of the final result of the patent lawsuit in Germany, Everlight reported that Nichia’s patent in Europe has expired in 2017 and that the result does not affect Everlight’s current products.

Chinese LED package company Kinglight has launched new facilities in Suzhou, China which will be producing Mini LED and fine-pitch LED products.

The applications of IoT have been under the spotlight in many parts of the industry. Osram, as a high-tech company, has presented eight approaches in healthcare where IoT can be applied to solve problems.

Cree has announced the results of its annual shareholders meeting including the appointment of a new chairman and two newly elected members to the board of directors.

Taiwanese panel producer Innolux has announced the restructuring of the company’s organization. Robert Shiao, the prior president of the company, has become Vice Chairman. James Yang was promoted as President from Vice President and will oversee the business unit, operation unit and manufacturer unit of Innolux. According to Jim Hung, Chairman of Innolux, the new management team would strengthen the flexibility and competitiveness of the company.

Samsung Electronics has worked closely with the filming and entertainment industry to promote its Onyx LED Cinema. The company has announced a new CSI Leasing program to service its existing and future customers as well as sharing the list of certified resellers for the Samsung Onyx at this year’s ShowEast event.

LEDinside forecasts that the development of Mini LED will accelerate in 2019 and 2020 and its market value will reach US$ 1699 million by 2022. Several industry players including San’an, HC Semitek, Epistar, NationStar, Harvatek, and Macroblock have reported their progress of Mini LED development. Meanwhile, panel producers such as AUO, BOE, Innolux and JDI have also unveiled applications adopting Mini LED technology.

The patent lawsuit between Japanese LED producer Nichia and Taiwanese LED manufacturer Everlight in Germany has finalized on October 1, 2018.

What is road driving going to be like in the future? Volkswagen has displayed its new vehicle lighting systems to show automotive LED lightings which project information onto the road and provide communication functions between cars to further improve road safety.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP (Fraunhofer FEP) has presented OLED microdisplays for VR glasses and introduced a tool set for AR applications using its OLED microdisplays. The German institute has showcased a prototype of VR glasses and the new displays at AWE Europe 2018 and will debut the AR application tool kits during electronica 2018 in Munich Germany. 

Researchers from the University of Houston have devised a new machine learning algorithm that can identify suitable materials for LED lighting. The new algorithm can be run on a personal computer and predict the properties of more than 100,000 compounds in search of those most likely to be efficient phosphors for LED lighting. The result of the research was published on October 22nd in Nature Communications.

LED driver IC company Macroblock has registered the highest monthly revenue of 2018 for September, which came to NT$ 305 million with an increase of 14.22% MoM and 16.14 YoY.

Mini LED is one of the key technologies for 2019 and will be making its way into the displays of consumer electronics. On the other hand, Micro LED technology, which has been on the spotlight in the recent years, is expected to be applied on displays in the market by 2021, according to the forecast of LEDinside.

AB Fagerhult, the largest lighting company in the Nordic countries has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the shareholders of iGuzzini, an Italian lighting group, to acquire 100 percent of the shares of iGuzzini.

Japan-based electronics company Panasonic has announced that the company will quit production of mercury lamps by the end of June 2020 and promote LED lighting replacement in response to the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

Professional UV and IR LED manufacturer High Power Lighting (HPL) has partnered with Epileds to establish a joint venture, Bioraytron. Bioraytron is a DUV LED manufacture company specializing in vertically integration of DUV LED from the production of epitaxy and wafer to packaging. Bioraytron will participate in BioOpto Japan 2018. The 10th BioOpto Japan will be held from October 17th to 19th 2018 in Chiba, Japan.

Alabama Power has established an innovation project to grow food in a shipping container retrofitted with LED lighting provided by Freight Farm. The aim of the project is to find out if the cost of using electricity to power indoor agriculture is more efficient and feasible in comparison with traditional agriculture.