LED lighting market soared increasingly in China

In the field of solid-state lighting, Taiwan makers have the highest potential utilizing related LED technologies they have. Demand for LED lighting products will increase by a CAGR of 31% during the period from 2007-2020. But the local LED industry still needs to tackle some issues.

While a LED bulb with an efficacy rate of 20% is able to deliver a brightness of 900lm/W at 15W, it is estimated that only 3W of the power is utilized to deliver the brightness and the remaining 12W is used for heat dissipation. However, if the efficacy can be ramped up to 80%, the bulb will just need to consume 0.75W for heat dissipation.

Taiwan’s LED industry is also facing challenges in terms of production equipment and patents, as a bulk of production equipment needs to be imported, and it stands in an unfavorable position in the cross-licensing trade-offs.

Issues concerning the availability, prices and related patents of fluorescent powder, a major material for the production of LED devices, are also unfavorable to Taiwan makers. Local manufacturers should develop new fluorescent technologies without the use of rare earth as well as new crystal growing equipment to enhance their competitiveness in the LED lighting segment.