In a continued effort to advance responsible driving and address wrong-way driver prevention, the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) installed six LED-enhanced “Wrong Way” signs Friday and Monday as part of a pilot project initiated by the NTTA’s Wrong-way Driver Task Force.

Taking advantage of the countless benefits of the LED, including its lower power consumption, and longer lifetime, various cities in the Unites States have been replacing traditional filament-based traffic signal bulbs with LED bulbs for years. Unfortunately, the low-wattage LED units are not hot enough to melt the snow that sticks to the lenses of traffic signals, causing dozens of accidents.

The Cree Cup Launches in China with Nearly 1,000 Students Submitting More than 100 Designs The first Cree Cup - Creative LED Lighting Design Contest for China University Students jointly organized by the China Association of Lighting Industry (CALI) and Cree, Inc. has successfully completed its preliminary round. After evaluation by the Contest Review Committee, 50 design projects have been selected for the final round.

ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq: ONNN) and California Micro Devices (Nasdaq: CAMD) has announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which ON Semiconductor will acquire California Micro Devices (CMD) through a cash tender offer of US$4.70 per share.

Generally speaking, those who believe that there is no possibility of a large scale replacement with LED street lamps mainly take two factors into account: the quality and cost of LED street lamps. The quality problem exists in all aspects: luminous flux, luminous efficacy, luminous decay, thermal dissipation, color temperature, luminance distribution, stability, homogeneity, power supply and lifespan of other components. On the other hand, the cost of street lamps is several even dozens times higher than conventional street lamps.

The Shanghai RenMin Road Tunnel and Guangzhou Zhujiang New City, each uses around 30,000 Golden DRAGON Oval Plus LEDs from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. These LEDs are chosen by Guangdong Zhonglong Communications Technology Ltd. due to their good optical performance and high reliability. In addition, their 50,000 hours lifetime extends service intervals, keeping maintenance costs down and reducing the total cost of ownership.

Cree, a leader in LED lighting, announces that LR24 recessed LED luminaires have been installed in the National Air and Space Museum. Designed for the new “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibit, the Cree LED lights replace high intensity discharge work lights, offering the high lumen output and efficacy required to work in the gallery.

Yesterday, Bivar announced the PM5-3 Series, a 3 lead common cathode, bi-color 5mm panel mount LED assembly. The first in a line of bi-color LED assemblies, the new PM5-3 series extends Bivar's existing panel mount assembly product line, and features input driven color adjustment capabilities to address the growing demand for enhanced LED indication in a wide variety of commercial and industrial machinery.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, has unveiled modular BCD (Bipolar, CMOS DMOS) process technologies targeting high voltage integrated LED driver devices. 

Seoul Semiconductor, a world leading LED manufacturer, has announced that its LED products were selected for the external balcony lights of 'Oasis of the Seas' , the world's largest and most innovative cruise liner, which made its inaugural voyage on 5 December 2009.

Philips LED floodlights already create extraordinary visual impact on some of the world's tallest buildings, including the CN Tower in Toronto, the Sky Tower in Auckland, and the EuroMast in Rotterdam. Today, Philips Electronics added Boston's Prudential Tower to the impressive list of landmark skyscrapers that use its LED lighting fixtures to dynamically transform their facades. Philips Invigorates Boston's Prudential Tower .

Based on statistics from LED industry research institute LEDinside, Taiwan’s listed LED manufacturers recorded total revenue of NT$6.852 billion in November 2009, down by 1.7% from NT$6.974 billion in October (+65% YoY). LED chipmakers’ total revenue amounted to NT$3.2 billion, up by 1.6% MoM, and LED packagers posted NT$3.652 billion in revenue, a 4.5% MoM decline.

Today, Grote Industries introduced the newest member of its LED WhiteLight Work Lamp Portfolio, the revolutionary Trilliant 36 LED WhiteLight Conversion Bulb. Trilliant 36 LED WhiteLight Conversion Bulb

In the United Kingdom, the promised energy efficiency and savings as a result of LED based lighting solutions is proving a reality at Morrisons’ Illingworth gasoline station and convenience market. The solution, created by Philips Lighting, demonstrates the benefits and appropriateness of LUXEON Rebel based luminaires for both internal and external applications. Most importantly, the LUXEON based solutions from Philips have enabled Morrisons to make substantial energy efficient gains without compromising performance.

Bulbs.com, a leading online light bulb supplier, announced that it has become an online distributor of Cree's LED lighting solutions. Cree LED Lighting delivers highly efficient, long-lasting lighting products for residential, commercial, industrial and institutional applications. CEO of bulbs.com., Mike Connors said, "We're glad to be working with Cree to make this major addition to our LED lighting product selection."

Yesterday, Rambus announced that it has acquired technology and patents related to LCDs and optoelectronics from Global Lighting Technologies (GLT) for US$26 million.

Samsung, South Korea’s largest PC maker, is preparing an onslaught of new product in the new year, with tablet PCs, more 3D and all monitors LED backlit by the end of 2010. Samsung will have those products in the future or coming into 2010. Samsung is also planning multitouch monitors and notebooks, as well as more 3D. The touchscreen monitors will likely be CCFL backlit to start, but later will be LED backlit.

Both Idemitsu Kotsan and Sumitomo executives in an article of the Financial Times, point out that "2012 will be the year when OLEDs hits the big times".

Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., the leading LED packaging company in Taiwan, Robert Yeh (chairman of the firm) is quite optimistic about a brighter market outlook for LED in 2010 than 2009.

After successful launching PLC-30(30W), PLC-60(60W) and PLC-100(96W) series, MEAN WELL added the new PLC-45 (45W) series to this LED power supply family for the emerging demand of LED lighting / decorative lighting applications. Until now, the PLC family designed with plastic cases plus terminal block style of I/O connection is able to offer user different wattage level from 30W to 96W.

It’s said that GE and Israel's Power Paper will jointly-develop self-powered (battery) OLED Lighting. The project will combine Power Paper's paper-thin, flexible batteries with GE's OLEDs. The company says that the new OLED products will cost less, be more effective and will be reliable and shock-resistant.

PTL Solar is an international solar street lighting solutions provider and part of Green Energy, while Carmanah is a global solar LED company. They will manufacture solar LED lighting solutions for outdoor applications at a facility in Dubai's Energy and Environment Park (Enpark).

Through continuous model advancement, Edison Opto has introduced EdiLine III for enhanced adaptability and robustness. EdiLine III is available in two types of packaging – 1W and 3.5W. The 1W device is measured at 41.25 x 4.0 x 0.8mm, with luminous flux of 100 lumens at cool white; while the 3W device is measured at 95.6 x 5.6 x 0.8mm with luminous flux of 330 lumens at cool white (CCT: 5,000~10,000K). Features:

Boosting advantages such as high efficiency and long lifespan, LEDs are playing an increasingly important role in today’s lighting industry. In the future, with the  packaging and chip technologies keep evolving, the production cost of LEDs will be lowered and the luminous efficiency enhanced, which will help the new light source find its place in even wider applications, said Huang Zhaonian, the Vice President of Taiwan’s Epistar Corporation, at the LEDforum 2009.

In response to the demand of LED lighting, following the successful launch of 18~150W LED power supply, MEAN WELL added two new series HLG-240 and HLG-240H to its high IP level product family in order to fulfill the higher wattage requirements in the market. With built-in active PFC function, the HLG-240H series features 90~305VAC wide range AC input (90~264VAC for HLG-240), thus not only meets the harmonic current limitation per EN61000-3-2 Class C, HLG-240(H), but fulfills PF>0.9 if loading over 65%.

Philips Lighting in China has launched two digital campaigns using augmented reality and interactive components. Tribal DDB Shanghai is behind the campaign with two virtual platforms to let consumers experience Philips.

The total value of global LED lighting industry has declined by 14% to US$ 2.14 billion in 2009 under the influence of global economic downturn; however, with the energy saving policies being released by governments around the world and “green” topics gaining increasing concern, this market will rapid pick up from 2010, and is estimated to reach US$5.27billion in value by 2012, Stephan Greiner, Vice President of Everlight Electronics’ global business group said on Nov. 24th at the LEDforum 2009.

Epistar Corp., Taiwan’s largest LED chip manufacturer, has decided to spend US$600 million to set up a LED production factory in Jiangsu, China, according to an article on Taiwan Economic News.

At LEDforum 2009, which took place on November 25, 2009, LEDinside Research Director Roger Chu proposed his viewpoint on the LED industry trend in 2010. He pointed out that high brightness LEDs, used in large-size backlights and lightings, will be the key growth driver of the LED market – with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of large-size backlight reaching 73%, and that of lighting market up by approximately 32%.

IXYS Corporation announces today sample availability of the LDS8640/41 and LDS8680/81, innovative 2 channels, charge-pump based, high efficiency LED drivers with low dropout voltage for Photo Flash applications. The drivers provide full output power from a single-cell lithium ion battery or supply voltage in the range of 2.7V to 5.5 V.