Friday, September 17, 2010

China Largest LED City

This is the latest update for the China Largest LED city's LED street lamps and decorative light.
This is the Wei Fang, the Kite City*. You can see LED street lamps everywhere. in fact Shan Dong Government is pushing for LED street lamp adoption with financial support as an energey saving prgramme.
* There is an international Kite Competition in Wie Fang in April every year.
Feverip

Sunday, September 12, 2010

LED Glowing Bath

All colour changing LED array are installed at the base f a bathtub, that could illuminate the translucent Acrylic shell. This Glowing Bath was the master piece of Melissa Sopel, multi colour can be programmed to change along with your mode while you are in the tub. That was a way to deliver soothing colour and being a sense of relaxation after a long hard day’s life!? Will it soon be manufactured!


Feverip

Saturday, September 11, 2010

World Thinnest LCD TV

This so caled LE-X8 is th world thinnest LCD TV with full LED Backlight with so call Nano Technology.
Still, LG's LEX8 8.8mm thick LCD is impressively thin and the picture quality is unquestionable Superb! This is a new product after its last success of Borderless TV.

Feverip

Thursday, September 9, 2010

LED TV Market will Revive in Q4 2010?

Let’s look for the big LED players for their recent product plan after market of Backlight has been slowing down.
CLSA

According to CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets data. By end 2011, total 262M sets of LCD TV would be produced in 2011, which is more 23% as of 2010’s 164M sets. They expect that the LCD sales penetration will be widened when the ASP further being suppressed when Panel Price drops!

LGE

LGE forecasts LG Electronics will increase 2011 LED TV Sales by 40% following the drop of ASP. They will push 35M LCD TV units in 2011 which is 40% more that the target of 25M units sales in 2010. On the other hand, Plasma TV sales will be pushed from 29M to 40M unit in 2011.

LED TV is about 20% of Total TV shipment in 2010. And this number will be increased to 60% in 2011 according to LGE studies.According to the home entertainment senior executives, LGE would push the sales in last 2H or 2010 and not too difficult at all to achieve the target sales of 40M sets in 2010. They will launch out high end TV such as 8mm LED TV, 3D TV and Smart TV. They may forecast that 1/3 of the TV would be SmartTV!
Samsung
Samsung has a special business culture and history, whenever there is crisis like scenario, they will do all kind of risk management and invest in such a low season for the next growth. Same case for SmartTV during their recent consortium presented by Chief of Samsung Electronics. LGE and Samsung is always striving for their best effort to keep them ahead the other in the sales races. LGE is the biggest rival in the commercial sector, if LGE will push out 40M TV in 2011, I do think that Samsung will not lose his monarch of sales to LGE… Definitely, they are working all around the groups with more new product launch to maintain the No. 1 Sales Position.

Skyworth

7th Sept, Mr. Zhang Xue Bin, Executive Chairman and CEO of Skyworth, China's 4th Largest LCD TV makers told to the Hong Kong media and investors that during the April-May LCD TV old stock purging action by selling at a low price. After World Club came to an end we had slash of the TV sales unless there is new stimulus campaign. Skyworth's CFO said that In China, there are approximately 6M sets of LCD TV what had been servicing for 5-6 years. There is a necessity and need for replacement with by new LCD TVs, amongst these 6Millions sets, there are at least 48M to 72M sets of them would go for LED Backlight units. These actions of new TV purchase will not stop for next 12 months!

Japan

LED TV becomes normalized as a standard terms for LCD TV Backlight TV in Japan when its Penetration rate climbed from 2.5% in January 2010 to 43.3% in August. Whilst the 3D TV is more than just a gadget as its penetration rate is merely 1.4% mainly due to the stringy and trivial attraction. The LED has successfully depressed the use of CCFL. The Penetration rate of CCFL was 97.1% in August 2009 dropping down to 56.7% In August of 2010. Of course, Japan is a energy and environmental sensitive country, helps to push LED as a leverage than CCFL.

At the same time, the ASP of LED TV drops vertically, a 40” model was selling at USD$4,315.00 in August 2009 down 60% in August 2010. LED TV is no longer the term for hi tech TV, instead, it is a standard feature in Japan’s consumers. As for the sales performance, Sharp is occupying 46.6%, followed by Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba..

Sony

The India TV market has big potential for flat panel TVs to grow in 2011 and beyond. Developed regions like Japan, US and Europe will complete the transition to flat panel TVs by the end of 2011 or first half of 2012, when most Analog Broadcasting System will be cut off. Although Samsung and LGE continue to be strong in emerging markets, Sony has approached the Indian flat panel TV market successfully with strong brand awareness and appropriate products for the Indian consumer. Sony increased its unit share of flat panel TVs to 27.1% in Q2’10 and took top share position in the Indian market. The total TV market in India for 2009 was around 13.8M units, making it the third-largest country market for TVs in the world, ahead of Japan and Brazil, and accounting for 37% of the Asia Pacific TV market.

Unity Opto and Epistar
With the CCFL flight back with an attractive price as leverage, original LED TV penetration expectation was 30% for 2010. According to Unity Opto ‘s (LED BLU manufacturer in Taiwan) forecast the new penetration rate is 15%-20% for 2010. Whereas Epistar (Taiwanese largest LED Chip maker) forecast will be to 20% to 25%. However Epistar would be optimistic for 2011 as Korean would be trigger launch of new model with more attractive features, and at Same Time China will be a big marker demand for LED TV. He is very optimistic to see that all year penetration rate will be touching 50% in 2011.
2011 will be the LED TV Era

LCD TV shipments in the first half of 2010 have been below expectations, but it is still possible to have a strong second half performance. Recent declines in panel prices will probably lead to low Q4 set prices, driving increases in unit demand. Even CRT had a better-than-expected result in Q2’10, as emerging markets purchased inexpensive sets for the World Cup. I believe that the Big Players like Samsung, LGE, Sony, Toshiba and Chinese band like Hisense, TCL, Konka and Skyworth, Changhong will carry on shipping out more cost effective LCD TV by end of the year, I can expect that the peak sales would be somewhere mid December to end of the year!

Next year, I think the sales if the LED TV would move up to another heights of record as more 3D featured TV and Smart TV will be available, Smart TV to be the home entertainment centre for some of the technology lovers. LED TV cost will be lowered by another 25%-30% as we can buy now. Brighter with lesser LED be more effective light transmission would be the main stream, that will be the evergreen product as a result of the latest LED technology with least power consumption, mercury free and reasonable beautiful picture quality. The 40% Reduction in number of LED usage on the BLU would be significant to cool down the heat for more assembly equipment. However, an era for LED truly penetration of 40% could be found across all sized… with 32”-40” will be the most popular size as an average. As an overall state of the LED needed to support on the BLU is sill on the positive side.

By First of December I will expect LED TV sales Slogan happened to be “Buy one get one free!” If you buy a 55” ED TV they will give you another 32” TV Free for your study room.

Summary

The BLU market momentum would get stabilized in end November and gradually regain the power for growing up till Mid 2011 unless there is some other unforeseen cause for slash.
Feverip

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The World Largest LED Show, The 12th China International Optoelectronics Expo, ShenZhen








The 12th China International Optoelectronic Expo in Shenzhen was held in the Fu Tian Exhibition hall this week. The LED Opto Product exhibition is in Hall 2 this year.
There are a lot of application on wall display, Huge TV using LED, though we can see a lot of different grade for display quality, we could foresee that the market is booming in this segment.

Most of the LED supplier, LED packager are coming form China, hardly can see anything from the top ten LED markers… Nichia, Cree, Osram, Seoul Semi, Philips Lumileds, Everlight and Liteon. Probably the customer are almost coming from China. There are a lot of Equipment Suppliers. Well, to be honest… I could say this is the largest Equipment show ever seen for LED product before… This Big names are here today, ASM, Kaijo, K & S, Musashi, NEC, MPI, Tripod, Plus a lot of smaller China LED equipment makers.

The product ranges from LED prober, Map Sorter, Die Bonder, Gold ball Bonder, Dispensing Machine, tester, sorter, Taping Machine…

Technology is still those renowned Leading suppliers like ASM who used extensively linear motors on their products, fiber communication system which matches with the speed of the CPU ensuring data is running supper fast at noise free environment.
The Harrier-Extreme is a Dual Head Gold Ball bonder which is being extensively used in IC assembly houses. Now it may one of the good tools for LED application say one head for 25 microns Gold wire on zener and the other for thicker wire say 30 microns for the HB LED chip!
Feverip

Monday, September 6, 2010

LED Backlight Market 4Q10

LED TV Sales
With the current weakening LED TV demand trend along with a seasonal Europe is impacting its growth prospects for the 3rd and forth quarters. The Korean LED makers are suffers utmost, some their production equipment is idling and immediately recall or halt their subcons on LED manufacturing. The next Impact would be Taiwan, they have to on hold their expansion for LED Back light unit production., few of them even reduce the working days. Japan and China is still able to maintain the production volume. Sony continues to perform especially in Europe that actually gained 7 percent of market share. Europe and Latin America exceed the forecast by 22% and 31% respectively. Whereas North America market was poor with 14% below our expectation.
PDP and Plasma
PDP came back from death, increase from 6.3% to 8% mainly the price is driving everything the LED premium of 60-70% is too high. Consumer TVs larger than 55" are looking for PDP which offers an attractive alternative to the LED backlit LCD TVs at the current price tag. Especially the larger LCD TV is usually the flagship and it would unquestionably go for the highest LED set-up configuration of say direct backlight regardless of cost. Plasma TV shipment growth has been accelerating, increasing from single-digit growth in Q4’09 to 47% Y/Y growth in Q2’10. Plasma offers a greater value-per-inch than comparable LCD sets, more vivid colour and better contrast. This gap widened in Q2’10.
Panel manufacturersIn June 2009 during the global economic melt period, six of China biggest TV manufacturer delegation came to Taiwan to sign a contract with CMI for panel, however these players are all fell in shipment by 20% QoQ. Hisense, TCL, Konka and Skyworth lost market share.

Only Changhong could market share as the only one. So AUO, CMI and LG Display are mostly in the down-cycle mode. According to Display Search it would be negative affected by these Chinese TV markers. However the 2Q10 global LCD TV shipment reached 41.8m unit which is higher than the forecast 40.2m. We foresee 2010 LCD shipment forecast 184m unchanged due to panel price is declining which forces TV brands to discount aggressively to maintain the market sales.

Notebook panel inventory correction

PC OEMs are reducing their notebook panel inventory, reducing the need for LED backlight units.

LED BLU LCD TV

Estimates LED BLU penetration is 18 percent with respect to 3 percent last year which in fact is a pretty high growth In Q210. The LED TV share of was 21% in North America, 27% in Western Europe, 12% in China, and 7% in Latin America. Samsung retains his dragon-head position with 18.8% Global market share. Sony did well maintain the quarter with increasing market share from 9.2% to 12.1%. Mainly due to its aggressive marketing campaign and new product launches. LGE fell slightly to 12.3%, it is weak in Europe and Latin America.
LED over supply from 4Q10
We project demand to increase 62% in 2010 and 54% in 2011. We have to revise our supply growth assumption to 84% in 2011. We see an oversupply of 18% in 2011. We expect that by time 4Q10/1Q11 will be the point when supply and demand cross over, consequence is the drop of ASP.

LED Chip Supplier and Packager

The falling prices will pressures Epistar' sales and profit margin. Packagers like Everlight will face with similar pressure. Epistar and Everlight may have their orders affected earlier. The majority of the sales depend on outsourcing from Korea Samsung and LGE. The Korean manufacturer will keep production in house for high utilization and same time reducing outsourcing. Korean LED BLU maker has to go for more cost effective manufacturing equipment and new packaging method.

Price is King
Retail prices of LED-backlit TVs dropped to about 1.2 times as expensive as CCFL models in August, down from three times in end 2008 when LED-backlit models were first introduced into the China market. China's consumer electronics retailers Gome Electrical Appliances and Suning Appliance both saw LED-backlit TV sales at its stores in major cities rise to 40% of the total LCD revenues during the Labor Day holiday in May. China will start implementing the flat-panel TV energy efficiency standards on December 1, 2010, which will further drive the demand for LED-backlit TVs, as products that do not meet the standards will not be allowed to be displayed in shops.

LED LCD TV Market Prospectus
Growth in the LCD TV segment next year is expected to be surpassed by new technologies like LED backlighting and 3D. More 3D movie are pumping out from Hollywood into your home! Satellite TV provider DirecTV has launched a new satellite and one of the channels the new satellite broadcasts will be an all 3D channel. As new 3D content is available in America, more consumers will look to move to 3D capable TVs in 2010. Naturally a better Picture quality TV with LED Backlight technology will be the need for displaying 3D images! Steve Jobs has just announced his new Apple TV.. Thus to push further for more sales revenue soon from his products.

What are the LED TV Giants doing!?
General Lighting markets have a distinct set of market dynamics that are different from the LEDs used in display markets. Cree with lighting as major business focus indicates that general lighting demand continues to be strong and channel inventories are positive. When first LED TV was launched by Samsung in Mar 2009 with immediate success and a lot of followers to grasp the opportunity to produce the so called “LED TV”.

Now after more than one year, the use of the LED has been changed in order to reduce the cost of the LED light guide: 1) Reducing the number of LED by reducing the LED bars from 4 strips into two or even one. 2) reducing from typically 400 LEDs for edge light Back light unit to about 200 or less LED, 3) increasing the size of the LED chip. Though the light guide efficiency was increase fro 15% to 25%, even though, by doing so the total number of LED would be reduced for more than 40%! That is an equivalent a decline on packaging equipment.

On the other hand, iPad and Iphone4 are nominated the best two products in the year. They are using two top major LED players on the back light unit. These two world LED giants are not affected by this sudden slash of Backlight market. In face likely they are pumping up with momentum to increase their production capacity.

World Economy

The US economy is still like a veil of mist over the mountain as the Unemployment rate is still high as 9.5-9.6% which is the top of the do-list in Obama s’ desk. The Republican would ridicule Obama in the next presidential election. China has just surpassed Japan as the 2nd largest economy system. The huge domestic consumer market demand would continue support the LCD TV business. China became the world Richest Government, followed by Japan, Russia and Sandi Arabic. Now China has national reserve of National reserves: $2,454,300,000,000, 2. Japan National reserves: $1,019,000,000,000, 3. Russia National reserves: $458,020,000,000, these Countries would not feel hesitation in pouring money into the LED market as for future national energy preserve as a national security consideration.

European economy power Germany has his string economy growth, their Automobile export increases 12% in August. France unemployment rate drops for the first time in the past two years!

PIGGS, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, five countries in the Euro-zone that foolishly did what a lot of big-time spenders do, borrow way too much during good times and then run into problems repaying their debt. That, of course, raises the specter of debt defaults, the kind of news that rattles investors and pounds world markets even Asia. And why should Germans who pay themselves modest pensions and hold off retirement put their savings at risk to bail out the Club Med? Many have predicted that economic nationalism would one day tear apart the European Union. The hour may be at hand. But I am optimistic to see that the PIGGS debts will be resolved with some monetary adjustment and support from the economic giants in EU. These are good supporting reason for Market growth of LED.
Will LED BLU market resume in December!
The issue at hand is the sudden slowdown in the LED Back light unit and LED display markets – a one-quarter phenomenon? I would like to see this way, people will keep on spending money for better Product of quality and lesser power. LED TV has becoming a more or less standard as for Better TV in consumers mind, at least the TV Salesman would say so… and LED TV is the best matching couple with the latest 3D movie at home. Samsung and LG will have to push out more new products for more revenues for their last fiscal quarter to fill in the P/L sheet for their CFO!
All net books and more Monitors will come with LED BLU, Apple products are all LED-Back-lighted! China the Consumer locomotives will bring LED TV BLU alive… I can not tell exactly but I do believe that with 3 months time, after new packages method, new marketing campaign and re-position of their product portfolio with new price. We will see a lower cost LED TV from Samsung, LG, Sony, Toshiba or even Vizio will be displayed in the Shops with a much attractive price… You would not be hesitating to replace, buy one more for your study room and change for a bigger one for your living room.
Feverip