As New Year brings new wishes, Taiwan’s major LED industry manufacturer Epistar shows optimistic attitudes on 2012 outlook for the LED market.

According to Epistar ‘s Chairman B.J. Lee, global shipments of LED light bulbs to double from the 2011 level to 300 million units in 2012 and the LED TV penetration rate is expected to surge from 36% to 60%. Based on the brisk market forecasts, Lee forecast the company’s shipments of general-lighting chips to shoot up 300% year-on-year in 2012, translating into a 200% gain in revenue.

In Lee’s opinion, over-optimism about the 2011 market of LED-lit TVs lead to disappointed sales of the industry. He thought that industry executives were under illusions that the TV penetration would increase to 50% from 18% last year, giving a boost to over-expansions by LED suppliers.

Due to oversupply, compounded by improved luminous efficacy of LEDs, sharply brought down prices of the devices, many South Korean LED makers have to turn to lighting applications to ease pressure on their backlight inventories. Although spreading low-priced LEDs into the lighting sector would undermine profit margin of the industry, Lee noted that it helps to advance the arrival of the price points where widespread of LED lights can be triggered.

Apart from that, Unity Chairman Alpha Wu also touted that 2012 would be the year for LED lighting to take off. Additionally, based on less expensive TVs lit by LED backlights and effective deadlines for incandescent bulb phase-outs, Taiwan’s industry executives also agree with the bright 2012 outlook. They pointed out that price gaps between LED and CCFL backlights have drawn further closer in favor of LEDs and advanced economies will begin phasing out incandescent bulbs this year.