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Editorial:
Will the Year of the Rooster Be a Wake Up Call?
... The Chinese New Year celebration (officially Feb. 9th through the 15th) is underway and we wish all our friends Gong Xi Fa Chai ! With 2005 being another Year of the Rooster, and 2004 having been the Year of the Monkey, I can't help but see the symbolism in...
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2012
SSL Summit Series keeps its focus to Smarter, Better Lighting
Launched in 2008, the SSL
Summit has tweaked its mission to facilitate a future of better lighting.
October's New York City meet really hit the target, and we're picking up the
pace for LA/Long Beach April 3-4, 2012. The Summit brings together key lighting
influencers with industry thought leaders, pioneers, and innovators from the
across the solid state lighting eco-system to engage their visions of the future
of lighting.
Quality is the gate, the future is the focus...
Showcase participants and sponsors are vetted to separate
the wheat from the chaff... Look into the series information at www.SSLsummit.com
for the details. Sponsorships and showcase positions are available now, and
event registration will open in early January.
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Commentary...
Will the Year of the Rooster Be a Wake Up Call?
... The Chinese New Year celebration (officially Feb. 9th through the 15th) is underway and we wish all our friends Gong Xi Fa Chai ! With 2005 being another Year of the Rooster, and 2004 having been the Year of the Monkey, I can't help but see the symbolism in...
View the
full story at the bottom of the current news page, or
if this is a back issue, go here...
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Bob Steele Kicks Off SIL with Forecast of $7 Billion Market by 2009February 8, 2005...The foremost market researcher in he field of advanced LEDs, Dr. Robert Steele
of Strategies Unlimited, kicked off today's opening day of Strategies In
Light (ref
our conference preview) with a forecast that the overall HB-LED market will
likely double in value by 2009 reaching an estimated worth of $7 billion.
According to Bob's talk, which annually announces SU's revised market numbers,
the HB-LED market grew a predicted 37% and resulted in $3.7 billion of revenue
to the worldwide manufacturers this last year. Note that Strategies' Bob Steele forecast...way back in 2001... that the
market would hit $3.4 Billion by 2005. (Ref:
our April 2001 article) Now that's our idea of a reliable market research
forecast!
Bob specifically reported that the market for backlights in
keypads was actually less than last year, capturing only 38% of the market in
'04; whereas that pivotal sector held 45% of the market in '03. Cellphones were the big winner
last year, capturing 58% of the market, yielding $2.15 billion, and automotive
and signage captured 13% of the market in '04. Bob Steele also told the audience
that while the $7 billion is an impressive number, it's actually a bit of a
slowdown compared to the dramatic years experienced from 1999 through last year.
Stay tuned for our series of reports about SIL from our News Editor, Scott McMahan, who is attending the meet in California.
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Lamina Develops 5 inch square 1,400 watt 28,000 Lumen White LED ArrayFebruary 8, 2005...Lamina Ceramics of Westhampton, New Jersey USA has announced the development
of what they're terming an ultrahigh lumen LED white light engine that's 14
times brighter than previously demonstrated white light LED array. The 28,000
lumen solid-state device is 5 inches square and is powered by 1,400 watts. This
announcement, which is a highlight of today's Strategies In Light conference in Burlingame, California comes just three months from Lamina's RGB (red-green-blue) light
engine and is twice as bright. Lamina is calling this newest white light engine
"Aterion White." It's comprised of 1,120 LEDs with a 5,500°K
color-corrected temperature (CCT) and a color rendition index (CRI) of 80.
LIGHTimes SecondPage members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
February 8, 2005...Cree, Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA one of the undisputed "Big 5"
in advanced LED manufacturing, is taking the opportunity of this week's Strategies
In Light conference in Burlingame, California USA to announce
their most recent breakthrough in white LED performance. The results were 100
lumens per watt and 50 percent wall-plug efficiency from standard 5 mm LEDs,
and maximum luminous flux of 60 lumens from its 7090 series white XLamp
power LEDs operating at 350 mA. According to Chris James, marketing manager
at Cree Lighting who described the advance, "We are demonstrating significant
levels of brightness and efficiencies from both standard and power LEDs. White
LEDs are on a critical path toward significantly reducing energy costs for lighting
throughout the world. Although there is significant development work to be done,
I believe the LED industry is advancing toward replacing the light bulb at a
more rapid pace than just a few years ago." Mr. James added that Cree will release more specifics about these breakthroughs soon.
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Oriol White LED IP Auction Brings $1.5 MillionFebruary 8, 2005...The February 3rd telephone auction of Oriol's white LED IP (ref:
our Jan 5th headline news coverage) concluded quickly and yielded $1.5 million.
Uncle Burt (Gordan Lancaster) called Friday to thank us for publicizing the
auction of Oriol's white LED intellectual property. It seems our efforts definitely
helped garner the right bidders. The winning bidder requested their name remain
unpublished. According to Burt, the proceeds from the auction will go to pay
all of Oriol's vendors, in full. The Silicon Valley-based USA company necessarily
went bankrupt after a major Korean investor's intentions to buy a major share
of the company proved fraudulent. When the company went into bankruptcy, Uncle
Burt's friends rallied behind him and his vendors kicked into patience
mode. Burt is an especially popular figure in the SSL industry. The bills will
soon be marked "Paid in Full." Texas A&M Commerce Gets Tools for Research Into LED Lighting Standards
Scott McMahanFebruary 7, 2005...Engineers, architects, and designers have long had standards for lighting with
incandescent bulbs and florescent light sources in a wide variety of applications,
environments, and conditions. As we advocated in our recent
editorial, these same types of standards should be developed for LED lighting.
According to a Texas A&M University (Commerce campus) press
release, the industrial engineering and technology department and its students
may help create such standards with the help of light measuring equipment purchased
with a donation. Donor Kevin Hannah is president of OptoEngineering, a Tulsa,
Oklahoma based LED lighting manufacturer. His company manufactures a patented,
pre-assembled LED lighting array for the sign industry based on specification.
Mr. Hannah, who will be opening a manufacturing facility in Commerce, Texas
said, "We create systems able to provide a complete solution incorporating
the largest variety of quality LED lighting components available on the market
today."
The press release stated that, "Students and faculty will be using
the equipment to establish empirical de facto standards -- standards that are
widely used and recognized by an industry -- for brightness in sign enclosures
based on LED lighting and power technologies. A&M-Commerce [campus]
plans to use the new equipment to optically measure different LEDs to determine
how much brightness is needed to illuminate specific areas. As
part of the research project, a database incorporating various business tools,
such as reports and statistics, will also be established and maintained."
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Commentary & Perspective...
Will the Year of the Rooster Be a Wake Up Call?February 8, 2005...The Chinese New Year celebration (officially Feb. 9th through the 15th)
is underway and we wish all our friends Gong Xi Fa Chai ! With 2005 being
another Year of the Rooster, and 2004 having been the Year of the
Monkey, I can't help but see the symbolism in this for the compound semi
industry. 2004 made a monkey out of too many people. We thought previous downturns
would be imitated and that things would pick up for everyone, but only the solid
state lighting (SSL) sector seemed to feel the lift. Even then, it wasn't as
high as many originally anticipated. Too many people either hyped the build-out
in the SSL sector, or they "believed their own press," which
is an age-old trap many fall into.
Now we have the rooster as the new year's mascot. As every rural dweller knows,
roosters make a lot of noise crowing the dawn of each new day, rain or shine.
They're traditionally a bit of a nuisance on a farm or ranch, but colorful,
cocky and protective, and little chicks simply wouldn't hatch without them.
The symbolism I see represented by 2005 being the Year of the Rooster
is that things will indeed pick up... a bit, and gradually... now that much
of the uncertainty that palled business and political sectors has lifted some.
But the forecast isn't totally bright and sunny.
With the gradual and long overdue recovery finally underway, 2005 will likely
be more of a wake up call and reality check. Today's business climate is tough.
Really tough. Companies are lean and mean, working their people extremely
hard, with few if any frills such as everyone enjoyed in the days before the
dramatic downturn. Taxes and prices are higher, salaries and benefits are lower,
and good jobs remain scarce. Signs are, that it's going to remain that way for
some time to come, and for sure until the world settles back down and fear and
intolerance is replaced once again by feelings and dealings based on mutual
trust, respect, and compassion.
2005 will hopefully be a wake up call for the world at large as to to wonders
of the technologies our field creates and deploys. The products the compound
semi and SSL industries produce and perfect literally help make the world a
better place in which to live, work, and thrive. Our wireless communication
technologies put people in touch with one another without the need for digging
up the earth and hardwiring it together. And where there exists wire, our optical
technologies make communication significantly better. Our solar technologies
in space are making it possible to launch longer-lived and more efficient satellites
that advance communication beyond our wildest dreams. Components for severe
environments allow us to explore and communicate through mediums never before
possible. And the lights we're creating in the solid state space are brightening
every corner of the earth with environmentally sound solutions never before
possible.
The wake up call isn't for us so much is it is for those adopting our solutions.
Many year of the roosters have cycled their twelve year intervals while those
solutions were in the making. Our technology pioneers and today's catalysts
have much to crow about. But caution... don't go overboard with the crowing.
All this nonsense about being the "world first, world's biggest, world's
best" isn't taken seriously by any good journalist. In fact... "world's
xx" is a turnoff and instantly deleted by any reputable reporter. Take
a lesson from a rooster we briefly had here at the ranch. He crowed so obnoxiously
all day long and became so aggressive that he quickly became history. If there
isn't a cagey competitor quietly waiting to outgun you, there's a clever carnivore
lurking nearby, and all that crowing and strutting simply makes an arrogant
rooster prime prey.
If you have questions about
the solid state lighting and compound semiconductor industries or
have
news or views to share, we want to hear from you! Feel free to contact
us anytime.
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