With the global LED lighting application market taking off, and business opportunities emerging fast, semiconductor firms, particularly LED driver IC vendors, around the globe have been exerting efforts to enhance their presence in the LED lighting market.
Hubie Notohamiprodjo, divisional director of marketing for solid state lighting (SSL) products at Dialog Semiconductor, shared his insights and product design trends of the LED lighting application market during a recent interview with Digitimes.
Q: How would you assess the LED lighting application market in 2014-2015?
A: Market demand for LED lighting applications has been growing rapidly in 2014, driving down the unit price of LED bulbs to US$6 on average in the year compared to US$25-30 previously.
I think the unit price is likely to drop to below US$3 in the next 2-3 years. Additionally, global demand for LED bulbs is expected to reach 375 million units in 2014 and over 600 million units in 2015.
LED lighting applications will reach far beyond just replacing traditional lighting bulbs. The production value of the global LED industry will also keep growing fast in the next 3-5 years as the ongoing designs will keep upgrading the efficiency, specifications and yield rates of LED bulbs.
Q: What kind of role LED chip vendors should play at the time when the end-market is growing rapidly?
A: Chip suppliers are bracing for brand new challenges when demand for LED bulbs is expanding at a fast pace. They should firstly tackle the issue related to production costs, not only just for chips but also including modules and end-systems so that end-market clients will prevail in a new round of price competition.
And also basically, it is a mandate for chip vendors to roll out IC parts with high quality, high yield rates and high efficiency. Lastly, they should also help clients differentiate their products from others such as making use of wireless and smart-controlled technologies to enable clients to advance from the low-end market to the mid-range to high-end segment.
Q: Do you think that the adoption of smart controls and wireless connection will endow more value added to end-market devices?
A: Indeed, we have seen more products and applications being applied to LED bulbs or LED lighting fixtures which are not just for the sake of energy-saving and long-lasting performance that LED bulbs are designed to offer. For example, LED bulbs controlled by Bluetooth and related applications are expected to hit store shelves soon. Additionally, some clients are testing the market for LED bulbs integrated with smoke control and temperature sensing capability.
For Dialog, our research team has followed the steps of Osram to roll out LED bulbs complied with DLT specifications that can smartly control the brightness and luminosity of the bulbs. Utilizing built-in DLT modules, users could turn their LED lighting applications into smart appliances through a set of applications at affordable cost.
DLT-compliant LED bulbs have been successfully marketed in Europe and are expected to make inroads into the markets in North and Latin Americas in 2015. The innovative DLT bulbs do bring some qualitative changes to the LED lighting market.
Q: What kind of role Taiwan-based makers can play in the global LED lighting supply chain?
A: Price competition is a necessary evil in the pursuit of high market share and growth rate in the global LED lighting application market in the short term, but it is not necessarily a shortcoming for Taiwan-based LED suppliers. Facing more and more fierce competition from China-based vendors, Taiwan's LED makers should maintain their competitiveness with high quality and high yield rates, while moving upward to the mid-range to high-end segment.
The arrival of LED lighting marks a transition between generations, a process that is not just about replacement demand. LED makers should devote efforts to making LED lighting smarter, easier to control and with value added.
(This interview was translated from Chinese)
Hubie Notohamiprodjo, SSL products marketing director, Dialog Semiconductor
Photo: Cage Chao, Digitimes, November 2014
Article translated by Steve Shen
