According to a recent survey by market research firm iSuppli and StrategiesUnlimited, the total LED market will reach $9 billion in 2011, with the main growth point or 83% growth coming from high-brightness LEDs driven by emerging applications. The expansion of product demand. In addition to the LED market forecast, StrategiesUnlimited also predicts that the market for high-brightness LED driver chips will grow strongly and is expected to exceed $1.9 billion in 2011. Through the efforts of global LED technology leaders to improve materials, process and packaging technology, the luminous efficiency and performance of high-brightness LEDs have been significantly improved. In addition to the traditional backlight and display panel market, high-brightness LEDs have begun to go indoor and outdoor general lighting, New applications such as interior and exterior lighting, searchlights, and traffic lights.
With the rapid increase in LED luminous efficiency, the LED application market has moved toward general lighting.
This is a transition from the lighting market to more energy efficient high-brightness LEDs and a good opportunity for semiconductor manufacturers and distributors to participate. Therefore, many overseas and Chinese local IC suppliers have laid out the LED application market, and various distributors have also actively intervened to form R&D and sales forces. In addition to large overseas distributors such as Arrow, Avnet, and Zengqiang, local distributors such as Xuguangtai and Beigaozhi also combine their own product lines, with corresponding driver ICs, and even related lenses and MCUs to provide a complete solution. The plan is to enter the LED lighting market with great potential.
Arrow has been involved in the LED lighting market since last year. From last year to this year, this part of the business has been growing at a high speed. Wu Bingyan, director of the company's lighting solutions business, believes that since most of the semiconductor lighting products are produced in China, China should be the world's largest city. He continues to say that the demand for China's semiconductor lighting market last year was about $150 million. Affected by resource shortages and environmental protection requirements, government procurement dominates and the procurement share is about 60%.
In fact, due to the late start, Arrow has not gained a large market share, but from the perspective of this year's shipments, the first quarter was almost the same as last year's full-year revenue, the first half of the year was 1~ 2 times. Despite the late start, the starting level is not low. The main brand of Arrow is Cree. Cree is the world's leading manufacturer of high-power LED technology. Currently, there are only two distributors in China. This provides a good opportunity for Arrow to show its talents in China with its strong sales network and technical support.
Not only that, Arrow Electronics announced the acquisition of Achieva's electronic component distribution division in March this year, and Achieva has been distributing another heavyweight supplier, Osram, for a long time. This is undoubtedly the current expansion of the semiconductor lighting market. The electron is injected into the core.
Wu Bingyan said that Cree is the world's leader in lighting brightness, able to achieve the highest brightness of a single chip, and Osram's strength lies in having a lot of different lenses, the light spots come out in different forms. For example, the spot light that needs to be illuminated by the street lamp presents a rectangular shape of 4m1m, which requires special lens solution. Osram can solve these special applications well. Therefore, if the customer's needs are focused on the most intense spot, then choose Cree. The prices of these two brands are comparable in the same application. In addition, Osram's automotive applications also have a high market share. He said that at present, Arrow's strategy is to promote Cree and Osram through two different teams.
In addition to providing high-power LEDs, Arrow also represents a number of LED driver chips such as Fairchild, IR, Linear, Micrel, NS, ON, ST, and TI. The lenses used with Cree (Lens) are DialightL2, Fraen, and Asiasources. MCU suppliers Atmel, Freescale, NXP, Renesas and TI can provide one-stop procurement services on the one hand, and can fully meet the needs of downstream development and manufacturing manufacturers on the other.
In addition to the cooperation of large international distributors and leading suppliers, local distributors in China are also actively cooperating with second and third tier brands. Shenzhen Xuguangtai Electronics Co., Ltd. is currently the agent of Kingdom (Kingdequn) ultra-high brightness LED, which is characterized by better solving the heat problem, low temperature; no spot; orange color temperature can be achieved; high lumens. In addition, Xuguangtai also represented Taiwan's AXElite LED driver IC products.
Li Yijia, general manager of the company, said that Xu Guangtai's main areas of focus are automotive applications, flat panel displays, portable device screens and lighting applications. The potential of solid-state lighting applications is high, and it is estimated that lighting applications will be the market pie of the future. However, LED application lighting requires multi-technology integration, and we will combine the advantages of different suppliers according to market demand to maximize the integration of advantageous solutions. He said.
The biggest obstacle to promotion is the price
Distributors agree that the biggest obstacle to the current LED application in the solid-state lighting market is price. Absolute cost is too high, resulting in great pressure on price cuts. Li Yijia said that due to the continuous improvement of LED luminous efficiency, the luminous efficiency of LED lamps is not too much technical for entering solid-state lighting, but the price must be reduced year by year. The LED industry began to enter the initial lighting application from 2004 to 2005. It has dropped by 30%. The price reduction test is very strict. It must be reduced to 10% in 2012 to successfully open the lighting market.
He also pointed out that LEDs are clearly inferior to tungsten bulbs and fluorescent lamps in terms of cost and price alone.
Wu Bingyan of Arrow also holds the same view: The biggest problem is that the price is much more expensive than traditional home lighting, but in the long run, the benefits are obvious, durable and use less electricity. He continued: on the price side, customers expect a level of 1 cent per lumen, compared with about 5 cents at the beginning of last year and about 3 cents at the end of the year, which has almost dropped by half. At present, if it is a large batch, it is close. 2 cents. But to really reach 1 cent, it may take 12 to 18 months.
In terms of technology, brightness has gradually become less troublesome. Li Yijia said that because LED's luminous efficiency is the key to its development in lighting applications, LED suppliers are also fully sprinting. In the past one or two years, LED products have been introduced at a relatively fast speed, far exceeding the estimates of previous market estimates. In the efficiency process, the existing market has introduced 150 lumens of LED products per watt.
However, the problem of heat dissipation is not to be underestimated. Its size is small, but the heat caused by glare needs to be dissipated. Nowadays, the high-power LED lamp on the market uses natural heat dissipation, and the effect is not ideal. Wu Bingyan revealed that Arrow plans to seek a thermal grease supplier to enhance thermal conductivity.
In addition, the cooperation of LED products with lenses is quite important. Wu Bingyan said that Arrow has won many markets by integrating product lines to provide total solutions, especially in some large places, such as street lamps. In the future, we will continue to expand lens manufacturers and invest more in streetlights and traditional indoor and outdoor lighting. This year we have added platform application engineers to develop modules from the overall market, providing simpler solutions for customers who are still unfamiliar with semiconductor lighting, and a large number of FAEs will also address local customer needs locally. Wu Bingyan said.
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