Sep 3 2008
Taiwan's sales of new energy-efficient lights soared during the first half of this year, helped by the Beijing Olympics and higher energy prices that are encouraging the use of lower-cost lighting. Taiwan's light-emitting diode (LED) makers reported that their sales rose 16.1 percent in the first half of this year from the same period a year earlier.
The companies' first-half 2008 sales rose to NT$24.2 billion (US$771.3 million) from NT$20.8 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to information the companies provided to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The LED market is expanding, and demand attributable to the Beijing Olympics is boosting sales, according to some analysts.
"New applications are increasing," said Ivan Lin, an analyst with market researcher LEDinside in Taipei. "LEDs are increasingly used as backlights for notebook computers, in street lights and for factory lighting."
The high-brightness LED market grew by 9.5% to $4.6 billion in 2007, increasing from the 6% growth rate in 2005 and 2006, according to Strategies Unlimited analyst Robert Steele. The use of LEDs for signs, cars, signals and illumination together grew by 20% in 2007, with illumination applications having the highest growth rate, he said. The overall high-brightness LED market is forecast to grow at a cumulative aggregate growth rate of 20%, reaching $11.4 billion in 2012, according to Steele.
Taiwan has the world's second largest LED industry with a 20 percent share of the global market, according to LEDinside. Japan has the world's largest LED industry with a 37 percent share of the world market. LEDinside forecasts that Taiwan will have a 30 percent share of the market by 2010 as many of Taiwan's flat-panel display makers prepare to enter the business.
People are switching to LEDs to save energy and cut electricity bills with these lights, originally familiar to most people as decorations on Christmas trees. LEDs reduce energy consumption by emitting light from a chip rather than an incandescent filament in a light bulb or charged gases in a fluorescent light tube. LEDs use about a tenth of the energy of an incandescent bulb and can last a decade or longer. They also produce almost no heat, thereby reducing fire potential.
Taiwan LED makers have been among the first to enter the high-brightness (HB) segment. HB LEDs are a new generation of lights bright enough for car lights, interior and architectural lighting, projection, flat-panel display backlighting and signage.
The organizers of the Beijing Olympics used LEDs to illuminate the stage at the opening ceremony for the games with 44,000 of the lamps in a 147 meter x 36 meter screen at the venue. At least 36,000 LED lamps illuminated the translucent exterior of the gigantic Water Cube where the swimming competitions took place. The Olympics venue also had a gigantic LED screen measuring 30 meters x 200 meters.
Opto Tech Corp. of Taiwan supplied LEDs for the screen, according to LEDinside. The Taiwan supplier also won a contract from the Suzhou city government to supply the lamps for a gigantic screen, LEDinside said on its website.
Taiwan's LED makers include Arima Optoelectronics Corp., Bright LED Electronics Corp., Epistar Corp., Everlight Electronic Co., Formosa Epitaxy, Genesis Photonics Inc., Harvatek, I-Chiun Precision, Ligitek, Opto Tech and Unity Opto Technology Co.
The high-tech lights have other advantages because they take up less space, have no breakable glass or filaments, perform exceptionally well in cold environments, require no warm up time, eliminate frequent replacement of burned out bulbs and tubes and emit no harmful infrared or ultraviolet rays.
The lights are likely to take a larger portion of the multi-billion dollar market away from light bulbs and tubes as the new technology becomes more mature and manufacturing costs fall.
Taiwan's government aims to boost the domestic industry by replacing all the island's incandescent-type traffic lights with LED lamps in three years. Traffic signals that use LEDs consume 80-90 percent less energy and generally last 5-7 years, compared to just a year for a comparable incandescent light signal, according to the website of the Consortium for Energy Efficiency in Boston, Massachusetts. The Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE), a nonprofit public benefits corporation, develops initiatives for its North American members to promote the manufacture and purchase of energy-efficient products and services.
In 2001, the city of Portland, Oregon replaced nearly all its red and green incandescent traffic signals with new lights using LEDs. The project resulted in annual energy and maintenance savings totaling $400,000 and net payback in less than three years. The Chinese government aims to exploit various green technologies including LED and solar energy to help it reach the goal of trimming 10% of electricity consumption nationwide by 2010.
Despite the downturn in the global economy, Taiwan LED packaging company Ledtech Electronics continues to explore markets for new products, LEDinside said, citing industry sources. The company is planning to work with international partners to develop low-cost LED lamps and reading lights for underdeveloped countries, the website said, citing market sources.