A review of 2013 LED products indicates package free products have been under the industry lime light for the whole year. The new trendsetter in the LED industry is not an innovative technology, LED manufacturers have already invested resources in package free LED R&D for several years. As the market becomes increasingly mature, there is no doubt that 2013 is a package free year. Many companies are hoping to enter this market including big international brands, such as Toshiba, Cree and Philips Lumileds. Other companies that have shown interest include Taiwanse L...

LEDinside team would like to wish all our readers a Happy New Year. The LEDinside editorial team has continued with its recap of important industry developments in 2013:

Apple has done it again. In 2013, the company drove up sapphire substrate smartphone demands with the adoption of the material in iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S home buttons and camera lens covers. It does not stop there, though. The company’s recent patent applications reveal intentions of introducing sapphire substrate onto flexible wearable OLED device covers, which is likely to ignite new sapphire demands in 2014.

With the LED industry rebounding in 2013 due to developments in LED lighting, patent disputes between LED manufactures continue to rage on with no end in sight. The most notable has been the long fought out dispute between Japanese LED package manufacturer Nichia and Taiwanese package manufacturer Everlight, dragging their patent war through courts in Japan, China, the U.S., Germany, and more. Lawsuits between Nichia and Taiwanese LED package manufactures Unity Opto and Harvatek have also garnered a lot of news coverage. Aside from package manufactures, Korean TV manufacturer heavy weights Samsung and LG also drew a lot of attention during their patent dispute over OLED technology.

In the previous article we highlighted how China’s LED industry faces serious over subsidy situation due to overlapping funds issued by local and central governments. Compared to the Chinese government’s generous LED subsidy programs to manufacturers, the EU and U.S. are more focused on establishing new energy efficiency standards Some Chinese media outlets have interpreted this as setting up technical barriers. In this article we take a look at whether these claims are true.