Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What should we do about LED in 2010-2015?

Some people would have argued that it's been a tough time since 15 Sep 2008 till recently that we see some signs of rebound on IC. Most IC business experts agree that things have changed forever. However, as we have said in the past, change is neither intrinsically good nor bad in all cases. It is almost always an opportunity and that is certainly true for the future semiconductor industry! Recalling 2009, especially 1H, I think of how close we were to economic Armageddon in the last one year. For far too long, the global economy has rewarded short-termism.

2010 is about maintaining our Bull’s-eye on being good wealth God has given us. We face exciting challenges of being a global company, ingenuity and discipline is needed to ensure synergy and cross-fertilization between our operations locally and abroad, marketing through production, engineering and R&D development, Sales and Service.

2009 Samsung LED TV Inspiration
Marketing studies is essential and influential for our future product planning. The product launch timing is essential as what I learnt from Samsung on their LED TV programme, as reflected in “Samsung and Sony”, knowing that the best selling Electronics stuff is like Sashimi in Sushi bar, has to be kept Fresh and it is able to be sold expensively.

From Clayton M. Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, we learnt from Conner Peripherals, which pioneered and maintained the lead in selling 3.5” drives to portable computer makers, fundamentally changed the way drive makers had to approach the portables marker, as one Conner Executives described it. : from the beginning of the OEM disk driver industry, product development had proceeded in three sequential steps, First you design the drive then you make it; and then you sell it, They changed it all. They first sell the drives; then they design them. And then they build them. Whereas Seagate was never able to figure out how to sell drives on the portable market, they just never got it!
Business Forecast for 2010
We are at the beginning of a long and slow recovery in production of most regions and industries. Production and consumer declines reached lows in mid 2009. Financial crisis revealed excess physical capital for underlying demand. We're in a long adjustment period, to repair and rebalance the global economic system. Low interest rates, monetary policy, bank rescue packages, massive fiscal stimulus packages, relatively low commodity prices, inventory correction cycle over, and a slow build up of pent-up demand are the main economic drivers.

With the Worldwide GDP is expected to hit 2.7 in 2010, compared to minus 2.1 in 2009. The worldwide industrial production index is expected to reach 3.5 in 2010, compared to minus 10 in 2009! Regional recovery differences may be sharp. Asia grows, led by China, India; Japan lags North America modest gains on relatively weaker consumer spending. Europe protracted weakness.

Slow recovery in U.S. computer growth, PC spending momentum turned positive in October 2009. (2009 growth: minus 11.1 percent; 2010: plus 1.6 percent; 2011: plus 6.3 percent).

So as a summary, we should have a positive speculation on 2010 that should be a good year for all electronics and consumer business. LCD BLU will be the dominant player in term of revenue and growth. The shipment of LED BLU LCD TV will be in the range for approx. 10% ( my number) as penetration rate for all TV.

In 2009, the total number of shipment is only 2.9% which is approximately 2.7M sets. That is 3 times in terms of growth. Laptop will be using almost 100% LED as the LCD TV BLU. Total number of LED required is approx 19B pcs.

LED in this period will be obviously, explosively growing!
LED for general Lighting obviously, explosively growing, but a milder explosion

Forecast 2010-2015
The total New car sales in 2009 was 13,648,000 with an annual Growth of 46% over the year 2008. That number has outperformed USA. China now is the world largest market for Car.

World largest Shipment broker Clarkson latest data tells us that China has gained total 3,490,000 Tons CGT that is 44.4% of the world total tonnage, over taken Hyundai heavy industry as the World Largest Ship building industry.

By our forecast by, 2020, China will be the World largest Consumer market that will surpass USA as the World No. 1 Consumer market.

From 2010 to 2015, we will see China a tremendous growth of Economy, Hong Kong, being an important Southern Window, spring board into China as Asian office Head quarters, central management office for Logistics and Finance. Provided if there are less political chaos or minimum China political influence, Hong Kong should be one of the major beneficiate for the economics.

9 hot applications in 2010

1. LED Backlight LCD TV

2. LED for general illumination as stepping stone into SSL

3. SSL

4. E-book ,Touchy subjects: screens for portables

5. Solar Energy application

6. Roll to Roll technology

7. Picoprojectors,

8. Health care product- More people affording to pay more for medical care product

9. Android Invasion

The 10 technologies to watch out.

1. Biofeedback or thought-control of electronics

2. Printed electronics and jetting technology

3. Plastic memory

4. Maskless lithography

5. Parallel processing

6. Energy harvesting

7. Bio-electronics and wetware

8. Resistive RAM or the memristor

9. The through-silicon via

10. Various new battery technologies.

MEMS, OLED and 3DTV
I would not speculate MEMS, OLED & 3DTV will become dominant attraction in the 3-5 years. As MEMS is more or less an individual product design and some how IP will tie up their patent not allow others to copy, also their are similar kind of MEMS can be of replacement consideration.

OLED will be only gaining market size on small hand held display less than 7” dia. There will be another 10 years for LCD TV to survive before the OLED technology can overtake LCD with cost and good yield on larger screen up to TV..

3D TV will have to struggle for a number of years for industrial standardization. 3D TV will likely be a resurgence of laser-projection TVs! This is more or less he Betamax and VHS in 1980 that would not come to a hit until a commercialization occupancy could kick off this programme with commercial driving benefit.

LED BLU
LED BLU will be an explosive growth in 2010-2014 and this BLU is actually a stepping-stone to SSL. We can not ignore the Flash & Projection in mobile phones & cameras for the next 5 yrs. Like PicoProjector has become a product of its own and it may go for total 3 Million sets for sales in 2010.

What shall we do in 2010-2015?
Mid-term there's a big triangular constellation out there - that's the combination of Solar, Storage & SSL. Somehow the 'missing link' is the Storage (battery and new battery technology with good efficiency and more environmental friendly) technology - that's a must for true "Autarkic Systems" to work.

BLU migrating into SSL technology
This is the first time in the History of business that you can be great at what you’re re doing today and be out of business tomorrow.
Ken Benchard

We know that as SSL develops and Solar prices stabilize then the constellation will come together... that may be happening in year 2014. Hopefully we can well prepare in advance for the technology.

As for long term the SSL will become more in penetration in the market and ASP will drop 15% per year….
The HBLED market grow will be resumed in 2010 and a CAGR of 19.3% till 2013 with revenue of $12.4B. 2010-2015.

The LED illumination market in architectural applications is domi¬nated by early adopters. Less than 5% of the potential architectural applications being specified in 2006 used LED fixtures. Around 9% in 2007, 14% in 2008, by 2012, Estimated almost 25% of the potential applications will have converted to LEDs. Though I think this figure is a bit too optimistic.

We can see that there were no LED replacement bulbs in the HK market in 2008. Now you can find more shops are promoting and selling them. It is becoming a momentum to start and soon becoming a bigger market that only takes a couple of years. When you can see LED replacement tight bulb in Welcome and Park’n. That will be the time. I foresee that base on what we are working on, we can have such branded 7W LED light bulbs selling At USD$5.00 to USD$8.00 in 2011.

The reason why we can not have more cost effective LED light bulb available in the market is partly due to the Efficiency of LED is still far below our expectation of 60% plus the volume of the LED is not able to keep the ASP down below a X2 value formula ( Price of LED light bulb to be 3X or less than incandescent lamp)

Incandescent lamp is having Luminous Efficacy of 0.7%-5.1% depending on the design and wattage of the light bulb, Fluorescent light is having a much high efficiency such as 9-26W compact Fluorescent lamp is 9-11%. However, LED is in the range of 20-27% which is two times higher. Well, the technology is non-stopping, thousands of scientists are seeking on numerous way to increasing the lighting Luminous efficiency by employing the following improvement. The target of more than 60% is not a dream one day as we can see that there is huge R&D team has been working on.

What should do as for long term action
We may go into a stragety and look for opportunity for these technology Packaging technology
-Novel Process
-Thermal management
-Lead frame material
-CTE balance
-Phosphor spraying
-Phosphor application
-Material Studies
-Phosphor efficiency
-Chip Design and Chip material
-AC LED design
-Driver design and power supply

Wish List
Hope that we can manage to create more innovation on LED assembly cost reduction. More National stimulus programme to support Green LED development, More Chip maker and LED packaging team can reduce the cost of a 1W LED to less than USD$0.20. Then we can see that your and my houses are prone to be using all LED as the Solid State Lighting!

feverip

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