Siemens AG will sell its assembly systems business--Siemens Electronics Assembly Systems (SEAS)--to ASM Pacific Technology.

ASM Pacific Technology (Registered as 522 in Hong Kong stock Exchange) is a subsidiary of ASM International NV of the Netherlands. With the move, ASM Pacific technology (ASMPT) would be the best partner triggering new synergy to bring up the SEAS by means of ASM’s latest Technology on control and vision, expanding its product portfolio by entering into the surface mount technology (SMT) equipment business. Thus this move will likely create more revenue for companies.

SEAS, which has around 1,200 employees, is the world’s Third leading suppliers of surface assembly systems for the electronics industry after Panasonic and Fuji.. ''Due to the lack of internal synergies, SEAS is no longer a core business of Siemens,'' according to the German firm.
Munich, Germany is to remain the central location for production, testing and research at SEAS for time being, who knows when will they use a much cost effective manufacturing facilities of ASMPT to produce the part , thus to lower the cost and increase the competitiveness against the Japanese Rival, who knows after a period of three years, Siemens Siplace SMT Equipment will be the World No.1 in terms of profitability and Revenue?

ASM International also reported its quarterly results. It reported second quarter 2010 net sales of 302.4 million euros ($392.6 million), up 38% quarter to quarter and up 153% year to year.

Net earnings of the second quarter of 2010 were 47.5 million euros ($61.7 million), as compared to net earnings of 4.2 million euros ($5.5 million) in the first quarter of 2010 and a net loss of 55.7 million euros ($72.3 million) for the second quarter of 2009.

In a statement, Chuck del Prado, president and CEO of ASM International, said, "ASMI's second quarter performance reflects strong growth in both our wafer processing and assembly and packaging operations. Our front-end business returned to profitability, we reached the cost reduction targets as set out in our global restructuring programme, and we experienced an acceleration of orders compared to prior quarters.

In the yesterday ‘s RTHK2 Radio interview , WK Lee, CEO of ASMPT had announced that In back-end products responsible by ASMPT, met group turnover record of US$537 Millions for first two quarters. Record new order booking of US$908M, a strong surge of 73..5 % of the preceding six months.

on 28 July, ASM PT has been officially surprassed the turnover of US1B. With the new acquisition, and we would speculate that ASMPT will be setting a new target for a 2B Company. It would create a vibrancy to the SMT and the IC/LED assembly Industry.  Let's watch out.

Feverip
PS
ASMPT has been the World's No.1 Semiconductor Equipment Supplier since 2002.

Toshiba Lighttech, Sharp and Panasonics are the top three LED light bulb Makers in Japan

May 2010’s LED light bulb sales volume is 55 times more than the July 2009

GFK Japan 2 July announced of the LED sales volume in the home domestic stores in Japan.
The Sales volume of the LED light bulb is 55 times of the May 2009. Whereas the Sales amount is 48 times higher in the same period. Sharp, Toshiba Light, and Panasonics occupies most of the the sales amount of light bulbs.
The top sales item is the Toshiba’s LDA6N which was launched in 5 March.
Other three models fill up the 3rd, 8th and 10th top sales items. Sharp’s DL-L601N launched in 1st Aug 2009 was the 2nd place, Sharp’s DL-J40AL three models took up the 4th, 5th, and 6th position. 7th Position is Panasonics’ LDA7D-A1 and LDA6L-E17 is the 9th position.
The Adoption rate is high and I foresee another two digits growth in 2011.

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World Largest Giant Origami Solar-Powered LED Crane

This year’s Coachella music festival in Indio, could use- a giant origami crane at the entrance. And it’s lit up with LEDs and powered by a solar system. Built by LA-based Crimson Collective, the sculpture, called Ascension, was inspired by the Japanese tradition of folding a thousand cranes in order to receive a wish. Thousands of fans enter the festival where they will pass under its welcoming wings, and be part of the collective intention of the crane.


The bird weighs 35,000 pounds with a wingspan of 150 feet. Ascension is a 45 foot tall living art installation made out of modular aluminum tubes and covered with a white mesh fabric called Textilene. The Crane is lit up with thousand of HB LEDs…Another Magnificent decorative structure built by latest lighting technology….

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Wei Feng, The China No. 1 LED City

According to Latest Shan Dong news on the latest Wei Feng High Tech LED general illumination project was approved by China as the special National Grade Semi Conductor illumination as the First City. After Wei Feng City has been granted the Ten City Ten Thousand Lamp Project “十城万盏” last year. Which is the Only City was granted this approval in the Whole Shan Dong province.

Wei Feng has been support by these major LED players such as AOD (Advanced Optronic Devices China Co. Ltd 中微光电子, Inspur Huaguang Optoelectronics Co浪潮华光, Geortek 歌尔光电…Specially AOD who had spent effort in building those Street Lamp for Wei Feng City.

Wei Feng City has install 30,000 Street Lamps and will be attaining 100,000 Lamps in 2011 this ensure Wei Feng City will be the Hottest City For LED in China under the Ten City Ten Thousand Lamp Project “十城万盏”

Wei Feng City is one of the four fundamental programme in Shan Dong Province. And Shan Dong has a target to make Wei Feng to be the China LED City by supporting these Players such as Inspur HuaGuang and other LED manufacturers by incentives and numerous subsidization in land and power resources. And Government would like to further supporting from them and make Government is the largest buyer for the LED Street Lamps. Moreover other Cities are also spending millions for inverting for building LED factory using the best in the LED equipment in the industry for their LED manufacturing. I have seen one whole new factory in the South part of Shan Xiang that they have 400 acres of land with total investment of over 1 Billion of RMB in the factory, We soon will see their first LED street lamp and Back light unit will be rolled off from the production line in End of August.


Haier, a China giant of Air Con, Refrigerators and domestic Electronics appliance colossus in China is building their LED manufacturing line in Dong Ying City and that will soon be one of the major LED supplier in the Shan Dong area. Their initial product is the LED back light unit for Haier LCD TVs.
These are the recent city outlooks whilst I was there last week.
I am looking forward to see ing Wei Feng City to be the largest China LED City in 2011.

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LED for Volkswagen L1 EV Car.

Thomas Reiners, director of Application Technology for special lighting at Osram said, “Compact and efficient LED sources will be mandatory for low energy consumption especially the environmental friendly electric vehicles in the future in order to achieve the car industry’s CO2 objectives. A dipped beam headlight with these light sources will use less than 15 watts and therefore save 40 watts of power input per vehicle side compared with a halogen solution.”
With a power input of 19 watts per dipped beam, the one-liter car’s lighting is far more energy efficient today than conventional headlight solutions, in which mostly halogen lamps with 55 watts are used. Even Xenon lamps at 35 watts of input use 20 percent more energy on dipped lights (95 percent of nighttime driving) than two Joule JFL2 LED modules.
“Energy efficiency and ease of integration were good reasons to rely on LED solutions for headlights on our one-liter car. This technology is just as forward-looking as our vehicle,” said Henning Kiel, lighting engineer at Volkswagen. Replaceable LED light sources represent a genuine alternative to the lamps already available in the car industry.
Oct 27, 2009 Osram’s LED technology will contribute to the energy efficiency of Volkswagen’s L1 concept car, which according to Volkswagen can go into production in 2013, has headlights that are equipped with new Osram Joule JFL2 LED systems and matching reflectors. The LED modules take care of the dipped and main beam functions and consume far less energy than conventional headlamps. Joule JFL2 LED modules will be introduced in production in early 2010 and can then be included in new vehicle models easily and across multiple platforms.

US or European technology for LED is still leading the market aas in the niche market of Automobile, however, once the stringent automobile quality requirement has been qualified, and people has been seeing this kind of head Lamp running on the road for a few years, more and more cars are keen on using LED as their lighting solutions. Instead of acting as a sales gadget for top of the line model. more volume production model will be using LED the LED head lamp business will grow gradually. As who will be paying such a large amount of money to buy a car not using LED on your, LS430, 3.5TL, 750Li, Q7 3.6 Quattro, Bentley Continental, Porsche Panamerica, or a Cayenne Turbo?

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Audi A8 is using Osram Ostar LED for their head lamps and DRL

This is an Audi  R8 using Lumileds HB LED for their Hi and Lo beam Head lamps. taken on 9 July at Tsue Mun Sea food market.

 The A8 is built with Osram LED for Hi Lo Beam and DRL

Since Lumileds launched for the first time for their High Power LEDs on Audi Top of the line R8 in 2007, and Koito Head lamp using Toyoda Kosei LED on Lexus LS600Ih low beam Head lamp... Over the years they have been lighting up thousand miles of road by these two players in a lead LED application market.

However the revenue created was not too much as all, as Audi initially announced that they produced only 20 R8 cars a day using the best of Audi Technicians and Toyoda may not produce so many as on their top of the series Lexus LX600ih hybrid luxury sedan.

Now Osram is really entering into the major market of A8 as the luxury category. That is a good sign for such a move as Osram is the world 2nd and Europe largest package LED manufacturer, their power on manufacturing is yet to be seen. Osram is famous for their penetration of their LED into the Automobile industry, BMW, Mercedes Benz Audi, Volkswagen are using more r less LED from Osram.

Naturally they understand the importance of LED reliability for Automobile stringent product requirement.
Ostar LED family provides some of his hi-performance LED for head lamp of Audi A8, each unit of LED produces 160 lm at a current of 700 ma and say five of these unit will produce 800 lumens. Osram’s OSTAR headlamp is available as a new product platform with up to five LED chips, each with typical light values of 160lm at 700mA. Together, depending on the variant and operating current, 125–1100lm is achievable. With its scalable brightness, the OSTAR headlamp suits all headlamp functions such as low and high beams, cornering lights, fog-lamps and even daytime running lights, says Osram.

LED has an advantage over HID lamp as for their effective life time is much longer, they can be switched on and functions at highest lighting intensity within in 2 milli seconds which is critical for High speed at night. Their profile is thinner and easy for the car design, could be a kind of face lifting for the car. Power saving, an essential element for EV car.

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Sleek and Stylish LED Desk Top Lamp

This is a piece of desk top lamp with Cold White LED as the illumination and amber LEDs are embedded on top for decoration. very beautiful. I saw it in Pacific Place Lane Crawford.
It is selling at HKD$15,900.00!

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China will be the largest consumer market for LED SSL.

From World bank’s forecast regarding the GDP figures of US and China.
The forecast of China 's GDP will be approximately 50% of USA by 2015, and 70% by 2025, and the growth is an exponentially in the years to come. By 2050 China GDP will be about three times that of USA!
Base on this astonishing data China is well aware of their energy policy as it does not have enough neutual resources storage of crude oil, whereas USA has a lot of hidden oil under the ground.

China Government energy policy includes a lot of incentive programmes to promote the use of  greener energy to replace the oil. LED is one of the major technologies, besides wind has a lot of limitation in China as due t o the installation cost and availability of wind in hilly profile of central China, Solar has been accepted as one kind of green ernergy but during the manufacturing of solar cell, we have to use up a lot of water and electricity, thus this is not being of Green energy as compare with LED.
During the Kyoto Protocol, China has shown to the major advance countries that we have an aggressive target to reduce GHG (Green Houses Gases) of 45% by 2050 starts at  2017. It seems that China will be starting late for the reduction of emission but we have to understand that China is big country of 1.3B population across  thousand miles frrom Shanghai to Urumqi in the Western border.
We will have to spend effort, money and national incentive drive to ensure this programme to be enforced, but it might take years.
The 2nd supporting country is Japan... Refer to the attached chart of the Major committment of the rate of emission reduction... Look at US. In fact President Bush was the one to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. As for LED side, the price of a CFL light bulb in USA is about USD$1.0 to USD$5.0.,This is cheap and there is no imminent need for them to use a kind of LED which is almost 20 to 30 times more expensive kind of lLED ighting fixture.

China will be the manufacturing centre and likely the largest LED lighting consumer for LED by 2014. China LED will be our focus today and Tomorrow.

The so called "10 cities and 10,000 light project" was not successful as China Would expect in 2009 as the Amount and quality of light produced has failed to reach the levels generated by their mercury-vapour rivals, due problems of heat dissipation and power sources.

The 21 cities covered by the first stage of the project have also encountered with financing problems. The next stage of the LED streetlight project includes plans to have 2 Millions LED streetlights in 50 cities, given the government’s efforts to encourage demand for domestically-produced LED chips. China still lacks adequate up-streamed process technology, however, I speculate that in Q211 the situation will stabilize and gradually moving upwards and we will see more and more LEDs will be used for general illumination in Major City of China starting 2011 and onwards.

Forecast the growth of LED light-bulb market to peak in 2012-15, and market size of the LED light-bulb market to reach US$10bn in 2016.


China will be our focus for LED Solid State Lighting Market now and tomorrow. With the Continuous effort of major chip manufacturer like  recent Cree's advanced LED chip development, one would say why don't we mention about Osram and Philips's Lumileds?
As both Philips and Osram has the  intrinic burden of their huge traditional Incandescent lamp and CFL factories that is hard for them to close down. Take for example, LED lighting fixture of Philips groups is just account for 5% of their total lighting product currently.

Also we can not ignore the continuous effort of those world class LED assembly manufacturing equipment supplier that could produce equipment with higher throughput 30% more in two years time. The early adoption of LED Solid state light fixture would be in one day be seen everywhere in the major cities in China and at same time in the street of Shinjuku, Paris, Hong Kong, Frankfurt and New York...

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