Taiwanese LED giants continue to spread

Prices continued to decline, and the trend of Evergrande was spreading on product prices. Despite the rapid growth of the LED lighting market in 2014, due to the strong expansion of Chinese and Korean manufacturers, it is expected that the price of LED chips will continue to decline. In fact, in the past two years, the price of 6-watt LED bulbs has dropped from 40 US dollars to 20 US dollars, and then to 10 US dollars, and it seems that the price reduction trend has not yet stopped. It is estimated that the average sales unit price (ASP) of LED chips in 2014 may also be Maintain about 10% decline. Li Bingjie, chairman of Taiwan's LED chip maker Epistar Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., pointed out that the average selling price of LED chips will still drop by more than 10% per year. At the same time, he believes that the demand for chips will not reach the supply-demand balance until the second half of 2014.

Due to fierce price competition, the industrial ecology will change accordingly. It is predicted that in the next two years, Taiwan's LED industry will continue to appear horizontal or vertical integration and mergers and acquisitions tide. This also means that in addition to the integration between the upstream and downstream supply chain links, integration within the same industry will also occur. Li Bingjie even believes that the next two years will be the key period for the development of LED chip manufacturers and packaging manufacturers. The LED industry in Taiwan will complete the integration and merger between companies by 2015. By then, Taiwan will likely have only two remaining companies. About the chip makers. In response to this development trend, Epistar has prepared sufficient funds to conduct vertical integration plans such as investment, equity participation, and cooperation. However, Epistar is not optimistic about the LED "through-train" business model, so it is mainly Use virtual integration.

Actively develop HVLED and unpackaged LEDs

In the face of price pressure, LED chip manufacturers can only respond to the reduction in production costs, and seek breakthroughs in product design and manufacturing processes. In addition, the use of the least amount of materials to produce more efficient LEDs is also the main method of reducing costs. one. For this reason, unpackaged chips and high-voltage (HV) LEDs are expected to become the next two major product development trends. In the view of HVLEDs, the use of one IC can replace the power driver, making the chip from the original account of the total cost of the LED bulbs. % to 20%.

Epistar has always focused on the research and development of high-voltage LED chips. In fact, as early as 2010, it has released high-voltage LED products, which have the advantages of small size, good heat dissipation capacity, and reduced drive costs. After long-term market cultivation, Epistar's high voltage LED has been widely used in street lamps, lamps and other products, and has become an important supplier of high voltage LED in the Asian LED chip industry. The product has high luminous efficiency and patents. Protection technology and huge red LED production capacity and other advantages, therefore, a research institute pointed out that Epistar will be one of the major beneficiaries of global LED lighting business opportunities.

In addition, Epistar has established several joint ventures in the Chinese mainland market in recent years, such as the joint venture with China Electronic Information Industry Group (CEC), Xiamen Development Crystal Lighting Company, and the establishment of a joint venture with Guangbao Technology and China Color Power Plant Konka. The Changzhou Jingpin Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., a joint venture with UMC Shandong Guanquan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., etc., has helped the company to expand its LED lighting market in mainland China.

Another technological development trend of Epistar is the introduction of the Embedded LED Chip (ELC). This product adopts a semiconductor manufacturing process, which can eliminate the need for a packaging process, without the use of lead frames and wire bonding, and the chip only with phosphors. Packaging glue can be matched and can be directly patched. It is understood that Epistar's ELC non-packaged chip products have already entered the backlight supply market, and will be used in the lighting market in the future.

In fact, LED manufacturers in Taiwan, including Taiwan Semiconductor Solid State Lighting Company and Haoyuan Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. have launched unpackaged chip products. Among them, the PFC package-free products developed by Stencil Optoelectronics use the basic design of flip chip (FlipChip) and do not need wire bonding. The advantage of the product is that the light efficiency can be increased to 200lm/W, and the light emitting angle can be greater than 300 degrees. In the ultra-wide angle full-circular design, it is possible to eliminate the use of secondary optical lenses, thereby significantly reducing light loss and product cost.

TSMC solid-state lighting has released the TRx series light board with unpackaged LED module technology after releasing the packageless PoD technology (PhosphoronDie). The non-encapsulated PoD module is a flip-chip structure developed using TSMC solid-state lighting. It uses advanced technology to cover the phosphor with the chip, and can become an LED light-emitting component without an additional packaging process. Tan Changlin, the general manager of the company, said that such components have the advantages of small size, high lumen density, large 150 degree light emission angle, combination of elasticity and lumens, uniform color temperature, and high driving voltage.