2015 LED Industry Development Trend

TrendForce's Green Energy Division's LEDinside Research Associate Chu Chaochao stated that 2014 was a challenging year for LED manufacturers. In the first half of the year, the demand from the lighting market exceeded expectations, causing LED demand to exceed However, due to repeated customer orders and the impact of excessive lighting inventory at the end of the market, the LED market demand has been frozen for a half year and the pressure of price competition has made the performance generally unsatisfactory in the second half of the year. On the whole, due to the rise of LED factories in mainland China, the LED prices have seen a continuous decline. Therefore, in 2015, LED manufacturers should focus on efforts to raise the technical threshold and invest new special applications to get rid of the Red Sea, which competes in price competition.

LEDinside proposed five major trends for the development of the LED industry in 2015, including: Evergrande, Chinese LED manufacturers' market share continues to increase; LED lighting customers continue to look for lower-cost solutions; look for special applications of the new Blue Ocean to enhance profitability; The LED output value of vehicles has grown year by year, of which the growth rate of exterior lighting has been the largest; the backlight LED specifications have evolved toward thinning and high saturation.

LEDinside pointed out that the number of newly installed MOCVD engines in the world will reach 239 units in 2014, and 2015 will be due to the continued subsidy measures of some local governments in China. It is expected that the installed capacity of more than 170 units will still be maintained. Chu Chaochao stated that the LED manufacturers' expansion plans will depend on the subsidy from local governments. Therefore, in the future, the LED chip factory will exhibit the phenomenon of permanent presence. With China’s LED wafer fab technology upgrading and capacity release, China’s share of global LED chip production is expected to increase from 27% in 2013 to 36% in 2014.

LEDinside also pointed out that due to the fierce competition in LED prices, manufacturers are actively looking for new special applications that can improve profits; for example, invisible LEDs that are drawing attention, including applications such as UV or IR LEDs. Although the market size of invisible LEDs is limited, it cannot be compared with applications such as LED lighting or backlighting. However, due to technical difficulties, customization requirements and close cooperation with system manufacturers, the entry threshold is high and the gross margin of products is obviously improved. White LED. At present, the UV LED and IR LED fields are mainly dominated by Japanese and European and American manufacturers, and Taiwan LED manufacturers also have a place. It is expected that more and more LED factories will enter the field of invisible light in the future.

In the automotive LED market, it has grown steadily. Among them, external LED lighting, such as DRL and H/L beam, has the best growth potential. LEDinside believes that due to LED technology upgrades and price declines, the demand for automotive LED lighting will gradually shift from high-end car models to mid-range models, adding momentum for automotive lighting needs in the coming years. In addition, LED applications in automotive interiors are still dominated by LED backlights for automotive panels, which are mainly accompanied by increased penetration of multimedia and sensing images, and traditional dashboards have also been changed to LCD panels.

In addition, due to the fierce price competition of the backlight LED, LED manufacturers began to think about how to increase the LED specifications to open up the gap with competitors. Taking a handheld device as an example, as high-end mobile phones gradually become thinner and thinner, the resolution of high-panel panels develops. For LED manufacturers, how to make LED lighter and brighter is the challenge for 2015. As for the TV LED backlight specifications, in addition to increasing the LED brightness to meet the needs of the 4K2K panel, the introduction of special red phosphor powder to achieve NTSC 100 high color saturation is also the focus of LED plant development. Therefore, the direction of LED manufacturers in 2015 is how to raise the threshold of technology and get rid of the Red Sea that competes for price competition.