One of the main LED industry indicators to look into in 2014 is manufacturers exponentially growing production volume. Where did this production capacity come from? Production capacity seen in 2014 mostly came from 2Q13 LED package expansions. A cloud of doom crept over the industry in 2012, as the industry’s oversupply situation triggered price wars and bankruptcy tsunami. Yet, in 2Q13 severe LED package shortages emerged as the slumping lighting market abruptly boomed. Many LED package manufacturers shared an optimistic market outlook at the time, some even doubled production capacity in a relatively short period.

Do LED lights always live up to manufacturers label claims in real-life applications? Not all the time, according to James Wallace, Principal and Design Director of Light Plan and Director of the Professional Lighting Designers’ Association (PLDA).

TOGGLED, developer and producer of next-generation solid-state lighting technology, reported today that in 2013 it was awarded 16 new LED lighting patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and 5 new LED lighting patents by international patent offices. With a total of 47 patents issued and more than 40 patents pending, the company continues to invest heavily in research and development, design, engineering, and manufacturing automation.  These investments have globally positioned TOGGLED as an intellectual property leader and competitive producer of commercial-grade LED lighting solutions.

“The National Lighting Bureau has once again performed yeoman service for North America’s lighting community.” So said National Lighting Bureau Chair Howard P. Lewis (Viscor Group of Companies) in reviewing the Bureau’s 2013 accomplishments at the conclusion of his fourth year in office. The Bureau serves as an independent, IRS-recognized not-for-profit lighting-information source created (in 1976) to help people make better decisions about lighting.

Kingsun released their 2013 revised earnings forecast on January 14th. In the company’s earlier 3Q13 report, they originally estimated net profit for market listed company shareholders in 2013 to reach RMB 105-136 million (US $17.4-22.5 million).

In 2013, the LED package market value was US$ 12.5 billion and is expected to reach US$ 13.39 billion (Year-on-Year +7%) in 2014, according to a LEDinside gold member report. Tablets and smartphones are still highlights of the LED market...

Vertically integrated Taiwanese LED manufacturer Lextar December revenue reached NT $1.1 billion (US $36.6 million), a decline of 5.8 percent from November but growth of 51.9 percent compared with December 2012. Revenue for 4Q13 was NT $3.32 billion, an increase of 40.9 compared to the same period in 2012. Revenue for 2013 as a whole was NT $13.7 billion, growth of 36.57 percent from NT $10.1 billion in 2012.

Taiwanese LED chip manufacturer Epileds released their December consolidated revenue. Affected by stocktaking towards the end of 2013, revenue for December reached NT $110 million (US $3.7 million), a decrease of 6.87 percent compared to November but a yearly growth of 16.38 percent. The company revenue for 4Q13 was NT $345 million, an increase of 6.76 percent from 3Q. Total revenue for 2013 reached NT $1.32 billion, with a yearly decrease of 2.15 percent due to impact from price drops.

Taiwanese package manufacturer Harvatek operational performance strengthened during the second half of 2013. The company hopes profit gain in 3Q13 will carry on into 4Q13, said Billy Wang, Chairman of Harvatek. The company hopes to maintain its profitable performance in 4Q13 , and aims to turnover previous losses to make 2013 a profitable year.

This week chubby TV developments have emerged on the radar screen. The TV is expected to become mainstream model in 2014, and to cope with ongoing price wars LED packagers are making swift changes in the packages used. Mid power LED sector is also seeing increased competition from EMC, PCTand Flip chips. The Chinese LED industry is facing tough challenges, whether it from corrupt government officials, or serious copycat issues in the decorative luminaire industry. Nichia and Everlight also enter a new round of patent wars in the U.S. this week. For more details please see below:

Spurred by LED lighting and mobile device market demands, sapphire substrate manufacturers have been actively expanding their production capacity, according to TrendForce subsidiary LEDinside’s “Global Sapphire Substrate Market 2013” research report. The top five sapphire ingot manufacturers for instance, have seen 2-inch equiv. sapphire substrate monthly production capacity grow by 75% to 7800Kmm compared to 2012.

This week U.S. Department of Energy released two new reports that manufacturers might want to check out over the weekend. The first is pricing and efficacy trend analysis for utility program planning, and the second is a subjective evaluation of LED PAR38 lamps. As Apple signs a long term agreement with GTAT for sapphire substrate production, Chinese manufacturers are also eager to grab a share. Also this week, Beijing court rulings give Nichia an upper hand in its patent wars with Everlight. For further details please see below:

A couple of interesting LED technologies on the editorial radar this week. A UK team has now managed to increase Li-fi transmission speed to 10 Gbps, can this be the next big trend for industry non-lighting applications? We can only wait and see. Breakthroughs in quantum dot technology and phosphor have also taken place this week manufacturers just might be able to benefit and implement better cost control from these newer technologies. For more info, please see list below:

Top LED manufacturers including Philips, Osram Opto, Monocrystal, Cree and GT Advanced Technologies, shared insights of strategies and new technologies companies have developed to cope with costs and pricing competitions at LEDforum Taipei 2013 in Taiwan this week.Rivals Samsung and LG continue their race in OLED smartphones this week, while Genesis slips into Japan’s mobile phone supply chain. In addition, Cree has signed a remote phosphor patent agreement with Chinese LED manufacturer NNCrystal. Furthermore, rumors of U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is rumored to inject US$ 15.50 million into semiconductor and chip R&D might bring back a gleam of hope to the LED industry. Other hot news this week as following:

Rubicon Technology, Inc., a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, RFIC, semiconductor, and optical industries, yesterday reported financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2013. The Company reported second quarter revenue of $10.6 million as compared with $8.3 million in the prior quarter. Revenue was higher sequentially due to the stronger demand for two- and four-inch core products driven by the strengthening LED market. Raja Parvez, President and CEO of Rubicon Technology, commented, “We saw stronger demand for tw...

Recent advances in microelectronics technology and production processes have led to the rapid acceleration in LED manufacturing. The latest manufacturing, materials and production developments will be showcased at SEMICON West 2013, which is going to be held on July 9th to 11th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Generally over 620 companies will exhibit the latest innovations and solutions for advanced manufacturing. On this annual tradeshow, more than 200 exhibitors and nearly 20 hours of technical presentations will be focused on LED lighting mar...

Winners of the LED Aurora Awards 2013 were announced after a careful review of technology, efficiency, market performance, lighting quality, lighting design, and lighting compatibility was made by a professional committee. Details of a total of 18 awarded companies and products are shown below. Complete list of LED product awards 2013 Best LED Packaging Product C08-DR Series Lite-On Technology Corporation Lite-On Technology Corporation won the 2013 Best LED packaging Product award with their C08DR series. When selecting a winner for t...

According to the report from Taiwan Central News Agency, research institutes forecast that the global demand for LED commercial lighting (including office, retail store, hotel, etc.) in 2013 will reach $ 1.059 billion, a substantial increase of 50% over 2012. In accordance with reports, in view of the commercial lighting market, Japan, Europe and America, Mainland China and emerging markets such as Vietnam and Thailand have actively promoted the LED commercial lighting and released large amounts of orders. In addition, the lighting manufacturers in America improve ...

After years of development, China's LED stage light market has begun to take shape. Currently, there are more than 100 LED stage light enterprises (only refers to production companies, does not contain trade enterprises) in a certain scale in China. The annual output of LED stage light in 2012 is up to 1 billion Yuan, an growth over 20 % year on year. Due to the advantages of LED lighting, LED Stage lamp has been accepted by the market gradually, and its market demand will achieve rapid growth in the next few years. In 2012, the annual output value of China...

Fengzheng Su, the chairman of Ronda, said on June 9 that the demands for LED lighting and backlighting are good, pushing up capacity utilization to be remained at high, the revenue is expected to be higher quarterly in this year, and its lighting revenue benefit from that Japanese customers began to adopt LED for home lighting, the LED lighting revenue of Ronda is estimated to increase by 30% on the basis of last year. Fengzheng Su pointed out that in view of the visibility of current customers' orders, the order receiving in the third quarter is good, the market dema...

According to LEDinside, a research division of TrendForce, starting from August 2012, at least 5 M&A cases occurred in China and Taiwan; Epistar, for example, acquired 49% of Huga’s equity, and Sanan Opto acquired 120 million of FOREPI’s common stock. LEDinside indicated that starting from 2010, Chinese LED chip industries have aggressively invested in chips and caused severe oversupply in the market; chip price has continued to decline, and most industries have been struggling to survive in the industry. Even with the economic recovery, upstream LED chip manufacturers still failed to extricate themselves from the oversupply situation. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that M&A is the only solution to this problem.

 The 2013 Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Spring Edition) was held by HKTDC at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for four consecutive days. This grand exposition has gathered more than 1,000 exhibitors from 12 different countries, and it was also the first time for exhibitors from Finland, Greece, India, Macau and the UK to participate in this exposition.  The two new exhibitions at this year’s lighting fair--“Hall of Display World” and “World of Chandeliers” provided buyers with more options and enabled them to find more suitable products and suppliers.

The latest market report published by LEDinside, a research division of TrendForce showed that LED outdoor lighting replacements will be popular worldwide from 2013 to 2015, with Asian countries including China, Japan, and Taiwan acting most aggressively. Promoted by the policy, the LED outdoor lighting market value will be up to 2,478 million USD in 2013, an annual growth over 46%. In other emerging countries such as Thailand, Russia, Latin America and Africa, considerable streetlight replacements will also be installed in 2014. The installation of LED streetlight replacements will gradually slow down in 2015, and the number of worldwide LED streetlight replacements and newly installed LED streetlights will be maintained at approximately 10 million/year. 

According to LEDinside, the LED research division of TrendForce, the total revenue of Taiwanese listed LED manufacturers in January 2013 is 8,220 million NTD (+21.5%MoM, +39.9%YoY). LEDinside indicated that in addition to the fourth quarter of 2012 (traditional off season), the TV manufacturers’ delay in stocking will also cause difficulties in the fourth quarter revenue of LED manufacturers.