LED manufacturers accelerate their transition to niche applications in 2017

The growth rate of LED market output value in 2016 is not high, but the overall industry has undergone drastic changes. Chu Yuchao said that under the rise of demand for small-pitch LED displays, the supply of upstream LED chips is tight, making some LED chips and packaged devices the first price increase in the past five years. According to new research, the LED market output value reached 14. 8 billion US dollars in 2016, with an annual growth of 3. 4. Looking forward to 2017, the competition in the LED market is still fierce. Manufacturers will accelerate to switch to niche markets such as small-pitch display screens, infrared and ultraviolet LED in order to make profits. It is estimated that the LED market output value will reach 15. 4 billion US dollars in 2017, year Growth 4. The growth rate of LED market output value in 2016 is not high, but the overall industry has undergone drastic changes. Chu Yuchao said that with the rise of demand for small-pitch LED displays, the supply of upstream LED chips is tight, making some LED chips and packaged devices rise for the first time in the past five years. As for the downstream LED lighting products, there has also been a large price increase, mainly due to the increase in the cost of raw materials, especially the price increase of bulk metal raw materials such as copper and aluminum in the second half of this year, LED lighting manufacturers have to announce price increases to reflect costs. However, Chu Yuchao pointed out that this wave of LED price hikes has limited benefits for manufacturers, so most LED manufacturers are actively thinking about transformation strategies and accelerating their transformation into niche markets. The small-pitch LED display screen market has become a battleground for military strategists. In 2016, small-pitch display screens are favored by many traditional LED display screen manufacturers, mainly because consumers' demand for high quality is increasing day by day. Chu Yuchao said that the small-pitch LED display screen has driven the number of LED usage to increase geometrically, attracting many Chinese LED packaging factories to expand their production capacity to attack this market pie, under the pressure of huge capacity competition, LED operators tend to move to spacing P1. For markets below 5mm, higher precision specifications are used to avoid price competition. UV- The application market of c led will gradually expand with the improvement of efficiency. It is pointed out that the UV- C led is also the next Blue Ocean market that LED manufacturers pay attention. UV- C led has the function of sterilization and purification, and has high demand in application fields such as household appliances, water treatment, or air purification. Current UV- The external quantum efficiency of c led chips is still low and expensive. In the past, most research institutions in Japan, Europe and the United States were developing technologies without economies of scale. However, as more and more LED manufacturers begin to pay attention to UV- C led and investment in research and development resources will help accelerate UV-Market development of c led. The application of infrared LED components is more diversified. Infrared LED is a product with relatively mature technology and low cost, and its application is gradually diversified, including iris identification and somatosensory detection for VR applications, there are business opportunities for infrared LED. Chu Yuchao said that in recent years, infrared lasers have gradually attracted the attention of the market, including handheld devices and car networking. However, the key to the growth of infrared LED applications is still the willingness of terminal system operators to adopt and how to use infrared components to create new added value. Micro LED products are expected to come out. Micro LED is the next generation display technology that has the opportunity to replace OLED panels, attracting many brands to invest in research and development resources. Although the current Micro LED distance replaces the existing TFT-LCD (Liquid crystal) And OLED displays are still quite far away, and there are still many new display technologies competing in the market, but some manufacturers have planned to introduce Micro LED display applications with market positioning different from LCD or OLED panels, accelerate mass production with a lower PPI or a relatively small number of pixels. It is estimated that Micro LED related products will come out one after another in 2017.