Panasonic LED bulbs will hit RMB 5B sales by 2015

As March 11 Japan Earth Quake aftermath, Japanese had leant to go for greener energy and to be more conscious for Power saving Lighting devices such as LED lighting solution. Panasonic is Japan’s No. 1 LED lighting manufacturing Company, Though the market of Japan is big, but still not enough to feed this LED giant. The Road map for the market development is aiming to ship their LED lighting product to China,
Company target is to have 40% of their revenue coming from LED by 2015. and Overseas market will make up close to 40% of their products.
They would pursue for revenue of RMB 5b by year 2015, which is 5 times as comparing with 2009. They will set up their own 4800 selling points in various cities in China including this 2nd and third tier populated cities. Reversed engineering show that a 6.9 W 570 lm LED light bulb used 96 LEDs on a matrix layout on a ceramic substrates.
That is a standard way for Japanese LED light bulb using a lot of LEDs from 36 to 126 pieces. We will foresee that Panasonic will use up a lot of LED in the coming 4 years. They will use likely good Quality Japan LED for their packaging. Will not know if they will switch to other country supplier of LED by time when the price keeps on dropping for the finished LED light bulb. A 6.9W LED light bulb was selling at Yen 2,000 only latelty. We can see that the price is undergone a serious erosion, that is good for a massive penetration for the replacement of CFLs lighting in Japan and China.
HK Snob

Cree's huge move into China

According to Cree, it will build its first chip production facility outside of North America at Huizhou, which is in southern China.

Cree didn't announce how many employees it plans to hire at the new plant. Already more than half of the company's 3,500 employees work in China, mostly at an existing plant in Huizhou.
Cree employs about 1,500 at its headquarters and manufacturing plant in Durham, but it said last month that it planned to add 575 workers by the end of 2012 -- including 200 within a few months -- as part of its expansion plant expansion there.

Cree revenue for the fiscal first quarter that ended Sept. 27 totaled $169.1 million -- up 20 percent compared with a year ago and a 14 percent increase over the previous quarter.
Profits for the quarter totaled $21 million, versus $5.9 million a year ago.

Cree previously said it would spend between $150 million and $165 million during its current fiscal year to expand its plants in Durham and China to meet growing demand. Probably this announcement from Chuck Swobada (CEO of Cree) had mentioned earlier that they will have lessen Chip supply of Q2 2010, as partly due to this new chip manufacturing facilities installation.
With such big Move, Cree will be sustaining his position in Chip and his Package LED supply as Crees’ smart approach in using China competitive labour and skillful technical people as a to turn out supply of LED with competitive price into China huge LED demand for their Lighting.

Some LED Players

Shuji Nakamura

Lumileds K2 Power LED

Cree XLamp 7090

Avago Technologies

Avago Technologies is an American company which was earlier the semiconductor products division of HP and later Agilent Technologies, before being spun off into a distinct legal entity. It holds more than 2,000 patents.

In late 2005 the semiconductor division of Agilent was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners, and became an independent company. Today it is one of the largest privately held semiconductor companies in the world, with approximately 6,000 employees and net revenue of $1.8 billion in fiscal 2005.

Avago Technologies provides a range of analog, mixed-signal and optoelectronic components and subsystems to more than 40,000 customers. Thin Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) filters are produced for mobile phones and WLAN.

Avago is also one of the world largest LED manufacturers. They produce billions of LED a year for different application. Product portfolio covers through holes LED, Surface mount PLCC, Envisium Surface Mount PLCC-4 LED, Moonstone High Power LED, Moonstone High Power RGB LED and various kinds of indicators and displays.
"Avago" is an Australian slang word. It means, "Give it a try - have a go."

Cree Inc.
CREE is a Durham, North Carolina based, American corporation which manufactures semiconductor materials and devices. It was formed in 1987 by researchers from North Carolina State University. Materials products include silicon, Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride. Device products light-emitting diodes (LEDs) made from their materials for a variety of uses, as well as power supply chips, motor controllers and microwave radios.

The wide band gap semiconductors are suitable for high voltage or high power or high temperature operation. SiC is used for high power electronics, largely due to having a very high thermal conductivity.

Two directors of Cree are John Palmour and Chuck Swoboda.

Cree's high-power LEDs, XLamp 7090 XR-E Q4
Some operations are now located Tai Po Science Park in Hong Kong. The company's silicon fabrication line in Sunnyvale, California is closed, and the company is now focusing on wide band-gap technologies.

The company produced a prototype White LED that can produce 161 lumens per watt while drawing 350mA of current, nearly 10 times what an incandescent (normal) light bulb can produce. As of March 2009, the most efficient white Cree LEDs commercially available, such as the XLamp XR-E R2, achieve 100 lumens per watt. Based on more than 20,000h of continuous testing, Cree estimates that XR-E LEDs will lose 30% of their brightness over a usage period of 50,000h (barring overheating).

Cree bought Cotco Hui Zhou in 2007 with USD$300 Millions , that is another step moving from Chip manufacturing into a highly vertical Integration of Package LED manufacturing.

Cree's competitors include Nichia Corporation, Osram Opto Semiconductors, PhilipsLumiles Lighting Company and GE Lighting (Vio). Cree is also facing increasing competition from low cost Taiwanese LED manufacturers such as Epistar and Everlight.

Everlight Taiwan
Everlight Electronics was established in 1983 and has played a critical role in Taiwan’s LED industry. In 2006 Everlight established itself as number one in terms of market share in Taiwan with second place significantly behind. Liteon In 2007. Everlight Electronics continued to lead the Taiwan market in both total revenue and in revenue growth rate Now. It established itself as the seventh largest LED manufacture in the world.

Everlight Electronics maintains assembly lines in all product series including High Power LEDs, LAMPs, SMD LEDs, Display and Infrared products. In addition to having the complete product series and a large manufacturing capacity, Everlight also integrated vertically by investing in LED optical chip manufacturing in order to maintain a stable supply of chips. Everlight Has factories in Taiwan and China.

Overall, Everlight’s competitive advantage is its manufacturing. The new awarded Product is Dolphin HB LED. Noteworthy is that Everlight unveiled its newest AC LED at the show, which can work without transformers and last for 50,000 hours, and was, scheduled to start shipping the product in the fourth quarter of this year.

Everlight today is a $300 million company headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, with over 4,000 employees and operations in China, Asia, North America and Europe.

I still recalled that I was the one to install the first two Die bonders in Tucheng Taipei when Everlight was still not as big s today in 1988. How this is the Taiwan Largest LED manufacturing.

LedEngin, Inc.

LedEngin, Inc. is a California-based solid-state lighting company specializing in ultra-bright LEDs capable of emitting 2,000+ lumens, delivering extreme flux density and industry leading reliability as well as luminous efficiency >80 lumens/Watt in some applications. The Lux family of replacement lamps and lighting modules provide superior quality light in directional applications equivalent to 35W and 50W halogen lamps. LedEngin also develops LED custom solutions and provides expert application support on optical, electrical and thermal management. For more information, email LedEngin at info@ledengin.com or visit http://www.ledengin.com/.


Liteon Taiwan
Lite-On started producing LED products in 1975 and has steadily grown into one of the world's largest optoelectronic component manufacturers by providing customers with both visible and infrared product solutions. High volume capacities for commodity items and application specific products, combined with strong R&D and vertical integration, have proven to be key distinguishing factors in Lite-On's success. Our broad product line continues to expand to meet the requirements of emerging markets and new applications. Liteon had factories in Thailand and Tianjin of China.

Lumileds USA
In the late 1990's, recognizing the potential for solid-state lighting, HP and Philips, one of the world's leading lighting companies, began exploring how they could work together and deliver a new solid-state lighting solution to the market. In 1999 HP split its company into two, and the optoelectronics group was assigned to the new Agilent Technologies. In November of the same year, recognizing the enormous potential for LEDs, Agilent Technologies and Philips (NYSE:PHG) formed Lumileds and assigned it the responsibility of developing and marketing the world's brightest LEDs and enabling a new world of light.

In 2005, Philips acquired Agilent Technologies’ interest in Lumileds. Today, the company continues to lead the industry in the development an Philips Lumileds Lighting Company is a fully integrated manufacturer of LED dice, packaged LEDs, and high-brightness LEDs

LUXEON®—designed for integration into general lighting products. The company markets LED solutions designed specifically for automotive applications, LCD displays, general lighting, portable applications, signage, traffic signals, and other segments. Philips Lumileds makes the world's brightest white, red, amber, blue and green LED release of increasingly brighter and technically advanced solid-state lighting technology.

Philips Lumileds' LUXEON® technology enables LEDs to match the brightness of conventional light sources and for the first time, makes it possible to replace incandescent, halogen and fluorescent bulbs in many products with smaller, longer-lasting and more energy efficient LEDs.
Luxeon is the trade name for high power LEDs that dissipate 1 watt or more. Models include Luxeon I, Luxeon III, Luxeon V, Luxeon K2, Luxeon Star, and Luxeon Rebel.

Luxeon LEDs produce powerful light, and are a popular choice among flashlight manufacturers. They are available in many colors, including white. Luxeon is in fact the first kind of an innovation design and had absolutely good thermal design LED.

Probably the only one using TFFC (Thin film Flip Chip) technology for LED manufacturing.
Competitors to Luxeon include Cree Inc., Seoul Semiconductor and Nichia Corporation.

Nichia Japan
The Nichia Corporation (日亜化学工業株式会社, Nichia Kagaku Kōgyō Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese chemical manufacturing company that is most widely known for producing phosphors, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

The Nichia Corporation was founded by Nobuo Ogawa (小川 信雄, 1912-2002) in 1956. One of his famous decisions was to support Shuji Nakamura (1954- ) to do research on Gallium Nitride light-emitting diodes when it was generally considered a very risky business. It turned out to be a great success. However, the company achieved a certain amount of notoriety for awarding a bonus of ¥20,000 Yen (US$180) to Shuji Nakamura for his invention of the first high brightness blue-light LED, which was based on Gallium Nitride. Nichia later settled out of court with Nakamura for ¥840 million Yen (US$7 million), in what was then the highest bonus ever awarded by a Japanese company.

After Nobuo Ogawa, the company was headed by Eiji Ogawa (小川英治, son-in-law of Nobuo Ogawa). Nichia Corporation's competitors include Seoul Semiconductor, Cree Inc, and Philips Lumileds Lighting Company.

Osram Germany
The name is derived from Osmium and Wolfram (German for Tungsten), as both these elements were commonly used for lighting filaments at the time the company was founded. OSRAM is a high-tech company in the lighting industry. Around 60 percent of sales come from energy-efficient products. Its was established in 1906, many years before that they have started the manufacturing of Incandescent Light bulb!

Litronix, original backbone and engineering team in Pennag 80’, and Siemens worked with Litronix and used Siemens Litronix since 1989 and then brought all manufacturing equipment from Siemens Malacca to the current Location in Penang with Factory “ Siemens” Then later Changed its name to Osram. Osram has been building LED in Pennag for more than 20 years. Today it is Owned subsidiary of Osram, Lighting manufacturer, a Industrial sector of Siemens. Osram, headquarters in Regensburg, probably the oldest Lighting company in the world. Since 1842.

With its headquarters in Regensburg (Germany), OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is in an excellent position to meet the challenges faced by a global high-tech company. More than 4600 employees throughout the world contribute to the success of OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, producing sales of 529 million Euros in the 2008 fiscal year (as at 30.09.2008). Around 12 percent of the sales of OSRAM GmbH are achieved with semiconductor products.

Major Product is Gold Dragon, Power TopLED for general illumination and Ostar for Hi Power illumination application.