A China Times report has highlighted five major LED market trends in 2015:

Epistar’s epiwafer utilization rates are expected to rise to at least 70% in March, according to several Taiwanese media reports.

Low heat emission is usually a good feature of LEDs, but it can be an issue in snowy regions.

Effective start 2015, Jes Munk Hansen is heading OSRAM’s Classic Lamps & Ballasts (CLB) business unit, taking on this assignment alongside his duties as CEO of the Region Americas.

Today Yole Développement (Yole), the market research, technology and strategy consulting company announces the founding of daughter company, BLUMORPHO SAS. BLUMORPHO’s mission is to create value from all forms of innovation.

LED Source, a franchisor of LED lighting products, announces the introduction of new Chief Operating Officer Sanford (Sandy) Lechner, CFE. Bringing years of experience working within the franchise community, Lechner is joining the company recently named on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies, its fourth consecutive year on the list.

Trilliant, the smart communications platform company, announced a partnership with Naples Florida based Apollo Metro, an intelligent smart lighting company, to integrate the Trilliant Smart Communications Platform with Apollo’s street lighting platform.

PayGo solar expert Azuri Technologies has introduced a new generation of LED lamps designed specifically for African off-grid rural markets. The new lamps feature in Azuri’s fully digital Quad solar home system, to be released in March.

LEDinside editoral team will be away during the Chinese Lunar New Year vacation starting from Feb. 17-23, and will not be updating the website during this period.

Unity Opto aims to ship 60 million bulbs by 2015, nearly doubled growth compared to 2014, according to a China Times report. 

HC Semitek announced its arm in Suzhou received RMB 49.60 million (US $7.94 million) worth of LED equipment subsidies from Zhangjiagang Economic and Technological Development Zone’s management committee.

Taiwanese LED manufacturer AOT projected significant growth in the UV LED market after recently announcing last month’s revenues, according to a Chinese-media LaoYaoBao report.

Toshiba has started mass producing LED products belonging to its new LED TL1L4 series as of Feb.4, 2015, according to a Nikkei BP report.

GE reported strong growth in LED lighting business,but overall lighting business slid down by 1%, due to declining traditional luminaire sales.

The U.S. Department of Energy's CALiPER program has released another special report on LED lamps that are available through the retail marketplace and targeted toward general consumers. CALiPER Retail Lamps Study 3.2 focuses on lumen depreciation and color shift in a subset of 15 LED A lamps from CALiPER Retail Lamps Study 3. The lamps were monitored in an automated long-term test apparatus for more than 7,500 hours.

LG Display and Samsung Display’s feud over technology theft intensified last Sunday, following a prosecution decision that indicted several Samsung employees were involved in a case of alleged industrial spying.

Energy efficient LED streetlights are often brighter than traditional luminaires, but poorly planned installations can create unintended dark corners.

Advanced lighting, front and back: Osram is represented in the BMW M4 Concept Iconic Lights not only with laser light in the headlights but also, and for the first time, with OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) in the tail lights. These area light sources enable the lights to be made in any shape, opening up completely new design options. “The show car is an important milestone for our OLED strategy. As a leading supplier Osram wants to have a presence on the road with a series OLED product from 2016 onward”, said Marc Lünnemann, the man responsible at Osram for OLED business.

Due to the impacts from election and constraining policy on real estate, housing markets have dropped to a 13 year low in 2014 in Taiwan; but even then, ALTLED® had cooperated with a new construction case and achieved staggering results of clearing every unit in just four months.

LEDinside’s Senior Analyst Figo Wang gives an in-depth analysis of the sapphire substrate market trends in 2015. Despite of the blows from GTAT’s bankruptcy last year, the sapphire market will continue to grow next year. Korean manufacturer Samsung Display has not given up on OLED TVs yet, and will be injecting millions into the technology. MLS has recorded a very successful IPO recently, with shares being oversubscribed by nearly 88 times. The U.S. court has started investigations into whether Feit Electric and Unity Opto have infringed Cree patents as claimed in the complaint.

Most new stocks on the market rarely achieve skyrocketing growth rates, but investors that have betted on MLS shares are probably thrilled at the moment.

In a recent financial statement, Nationstar highlighted positive growth during fiscal year 2014.

Vying future business opportunities in the global high-end LED display rental market, Aoto Electronics recently signed a strategic business agreement with Germany’s largest rental service provider Lang, according to an Aastock report.

India’s LED lighting market is currently at a nascent stage. Though the LED market is already growing at a robust pace over the last 2-3 years, the country offers huge growth potential, especially over the next 5-10 years. Increasing adoption of LED lighting is being witnessed across commercial and residential sectors, government projects, upcoming smart building projects, etc. According to a recently published report by TechSci Research “India LED Lighting Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2020”, the country’s LED lighting market is projected to register a growth of over 32% during 2015-20.

The UK’s Lighting Industry received a huge boost this week as the Lighting Industry Association received a share of GBP 1.3 million (US $2 million) from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund to further develop its laboratory services (LIA Laboratories) and new Lighting Training Academy.

Industry-Leading CR Series Troffer with SmartCast Technology Now Features Field Adjustable CCT, Delivering Customized and Dynamic Lighting Solutions

Cree announced that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has agreed to open an investigation into unfair trade practices by Feit Electric Company, Inc. and its Asian supplier, Unity Opto Technology Co., Ltd. The investigation includes allegations of infringement of 8 Cree patents related to LED lighting and Feit’s false and misleading advertising claims, including that certain of its products meet ENERGY STAR® specifications. The decision to open an investigation comes after Cree filed a complaint on January 12, 2015, requesting an investigation by the ITC.

The U.S. Department of Energy's CALiPER program has released Report 20.4, which is part of a series of investigations on LED PAR38 lamps. Report 20.4 focuses on lumen maintenance, chromaticity maintenance, and catastrophic failure in 32 of the Series 20 LED PAR38 lamps and eight benchmark lamps, which were monitored for nearly 14,000 hours at ambient temperatures between 44°C and 45°C. Among the findings:

Luminus Devices, a global manufacturer of high-performance LEDs and solid-state light sources, announced today the appointment of Mark Pugh as Vice President of Marketing. Pugh brings tremendous solid state lighting (SSL) experience to the company adding new depth and market knowledge to the Luminus executive management team.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), on behalf of its Lighting Systems Division, published a brief white paper on considerations U.S. federal, state, and local governments should have in mind when setting requirements for procurement of energy-efficient lighting systems. Specifically, the paper summarizes issues surrounding requirements that governments may set on the manufacturing location of final products or any product component.