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Editorial:
Follow the Lead of the Gentle Giants
... In an extended conversation today with Brett Kingstone, founder, President and CEO of Super Vision, I've concluded that there may indeed be more to this case than originally met this commentator's eye, as first noted in my Dec. 4th McDonald Report commentary, Super Vision vs. Color Kinetic Indicative of... Read the editorial...
(if it resists... go here)
For the latest news dedicated to LEDs
in general lighting, tune to Solid
State Lighting Design. Applications updates, the latest luminaires and wins,
subsystems and componentry in support of lighting in and around the built environment,
it's all there!
The
2010-2011 Summit Series is ready to succeed... are you?
After the successful 2008 launch and 2009/2010
expansion of Solid State Lighting Design's
SSL Summit in New Jersey, the feedback remains consistent: Just what we
needed, do it again soon. The Summit brings together lighting decision makers
with industry thought leaders, pioneers, and innovators from the across the
solid state lighting eco-system. Read
the 2009 conference report...
Following our changes in 2009, 2010-2011 will
continue to be all about quality, quality, quality.Showcase
participants and sponsors are vetted to separate the wheat from the chaff
(have your IES LM-79 test reports ready!). The 2010-2011 Summit includes NY/NJ
in September and LA/Long Beach next January. Look into the series information
at www.SSLsummit.com for the details.
Sponsorships are available for the full series.
Philips Reports Lumileds' Impressive Financial Performance for FY '04 Jo Ann McDonald, Founding Editor
December 23, 2004...One of the parent companies of Lumileds Lighting, Philips (the other being
Agilent) has broken precedence and reported the financial performance of its
offspring, and that performance was impressive. For the 2004 fiscal year that
just ended for Philips, Lumileds reported sales of $280 million, representing
a 43% annual growth, and their net income was $62 million, which as a percentage
of sales, represents 22% of sales. The figures were released during a presentation
to analysts by Peter van Strijp, Executive VP and CEO BU Solid State Lighting
at Philips on the occasion of their annual Analysts
Day. This was the first time Lumileds' revenues have been publicly reported
and the San Jose, California based Lumileds is justly proud of their numbers,
as is their parent company, Philips, which clearly made Solid State Lighting
(SSL) the hot topic of this particular Analysts
Day gathering in Europe. The presenters included the highest ranking executives
of Philips and the entire proceedings are available online, a webcast replay
of which will be available
online via this location for a year. An entire section was devoted to Philips'
strategic view of the SSL industry and Philips' role in it. Commentary on the
entire presentation and on Lumileds' performance and role in the industry will
be covered in detail in an upcoming McDonald Report. In the
meantime, we recommended you hit the above hotlinks and view the Philips presentations
for yourself. The pictures alone tell an incredible success story for SSL applications.
Opto Tech Tagged to Build Gigantic LED Display for 2008 Olympics in Beijing
December 23, 2004...Opto Tech of Taiwan has received the honor of building what looks to be the
largest LED display built to date, measuring approximately 6,000 square meters
-- 200 meters in length and 30 meters in width -- for promoting the Bejing Olympics
and serve as a major focal point at the International Trade Center. According
to a Dec. 21 DigiTimesreport,
Opto Tech intends to invest $20 million to complete the Bejing project, and
that other major cities in China are likely to commission similar giant screen
displays. According to the report, Opto Tech also told DigiTimes that
they've begun volume shipments of Nichia-branded blue spectrum LEDs.
Lighting decision
makers deserve quality answers, not hype...
Join
key NY-area lighting and sustainability decision makers at the SSL
industry's quality-focused "insiders meet",
September 14-15 in New York City...
They
are looking for the keys to quality in LED lighting, and you can not
afford to miss it. Just one look at the special
guests and NY
Summit agenda, and you will know why you need to be there in September!
Building on the continuing success of this first-of-its-kind event,
the 2010/2011 Summit series will again deliver the highest quality
agenda and attendees in an unsurpassed networking environment. We
have expanded the Summit to "take it to the facilities decision
makers" in NY, and quality oriented suppliers need to be seen. See what you need to be part of at
www.SSLsummit.com
Permlight Settles Patent Dispute with Tempo Lighting
December 23, 2004...Permlight Products of Tustin, California USA and Tempo Lighting have reached
a settlement over their dispute over infringement claims relating to two of
Permlight's US Patents, Numbers 6,416,200 and 6,082,870. As a result of the
settlement, Tempo will license Permlight's patented theater lighting technology
for its Sentinel and Sentry products. Terms of the license were not disclosed.
Company
news release
Allegro Introduces High Frequency Drivers for White LEDs
December 23, 2004...Allegro MicroSystems of Worcester, Massachusetts USA has launched a new line
of high-frequency boost converters with constant current output targeted at
driving white LEDs or similar loads. Dubbed the A8430, this is a non-inverting
boost dc-dc converter, providing a programmable constant current output at up
to 36 V for driving white LEDs in series which ensures identical currents and
uniform brightness. Allegro maintains this is a more efficient approach than
charge pump solutions which leads, in turn, to longer battery life. The output
current is set with an external resistor, and can be varied with either a PWM
signal or a control voltage at the top of the sense resistor when dimming control
is required. Company
news release
Interested
in general lighting, architectural applications or LED luminaire
product news?
While you're in exactly the right place for the broader LED industry
applications and supply chain news, general lighting products and
applications have moved over Solid State Lighting Design. See what
you've been missing today at www.SolidStateLightingDesign.com.
December 20, 2004...GaN LED and HBT pioneer, Jacques
Pankove, who has often been honored by our industry, has recently officially
retired from Astralux, the company
from which he has so wonderfully served the wide bandgap community since his
retirement from serving as a Professor at the University of Colorado in the
USA. Indeed a world citizen and longtime good friend to this editor, Jacques
and his wife Ethyl, who has been his partner in Astralux, continue to enjoy
good health and are watching the company they formed now be run by Randolph
E. Treece, Ph.D (Rande) whom Jacques has mentored in recent years to take over
the company. The right time has evidently come, and as of October, Rande became
owner of Astralux. What Astralux does is what it has always done, leverage its
core expertise in research and development and help young companies grow and
successfully spin out from Astralux, as they did with their first company, PowerSicel,
Inc., back in December of 2001. What PowerSicel did was leverage Jacques and
Rande's expertise in SiC transistor technology and a commitment of funds with
that of an Astralux employee, Dr. John Torvik, who serves as PowerSicel's co-founder
and President/CEO). For this, Astralux received an equity stake in PowerSicel
and commenced to raise additional funds to commercialize the transistor technology.
PowerSicel and Astralux continue to work closely together.
That model will be repeated often at Astralux in the years ahead and more people
like John Torvik are precisely what Rande's looking for. Astralux is essentially
a cutting edge hothouse. They bring technology from the concept stage
to the point that a high-growth company can be essentially birthed (spun off)
from Astralux. "We will grow value in Astralux by repeating this process.
We are currently working on the early stages of three main technology families.
The first is hybrid substrates, the combination of thin slices of one material
bonded to another to achieve the benefits of both. We have been funded by ONR
and the Air Force to develop SiC related hybrid substrates," said Rande
Treece. The second area of research involves the exciting devices that can be
developed based vacuum electron emission from negative electron affinity (NEA)
surfaces. "Through the appropriate engineering it should be possible
to create an electronic cooler, or a direct-thermal-to-electrical converter,
or (hopefully) both using GaN-based NEA materials. We are currently funded by
DARPA to work on this and have also received funds from the Office of the Secretary
of Defense related to these activities," he explained. "The
third area is based on UV-based bio-defense systems based on electron-pumped
UV emission. We are working with California-based Photon Systems, Inc. to develop
a UV laser that will be included in an analysis tool to detect biological agents.
This work is supported by DARPA. We are also working on a bio-decontamination
tool with the Air Force." Astralux currently has 7 issued patents and
5 in the hopper, which we covered in detail in our latest issue of LIGHTinsight.
Rande can be reached via www.Astraluxinc.com
his tel is: +1 303-413-1440 and email is rtreece@astraluxinc.com.
Our news features are reported
by the LIGHTimes staff writers.
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Commentary & Perspective...
Follow the Lead of the Gentle Giants
December 23, 2004...In an extended conversation today with Brett Kingstone, founder, President
and CEO of Super Vision, I've concluded that there may indeed be more to this
case than originally met this commentator's eye, as first noted in my Dec. 4th
McDonald Report commentary, Super
Vision vs. Color Kinetic Indicative of Typical Growing Pains. While the
entire Solid State Lighting (SSL) industry is indeed experiencing "typical
growing pains," we stopped short of researching
the outcome of the 1989 suit between FiberView and ADTI over HDTV technology,
and after losing his company (FiberView) over the dispute, the authorities ultimately
investigated Mr. Kingstone's situation and the ADTI people involved ended up
serving time in prison for fraud to shareholders and banks. A June 26, 1989 Forbes article
authored by George Gilder sheds more light on the story and we refer interested
readers to it as scanned and posted
in a pdf file on Super Vision's
website.
For those
following this current case, and the rise of a group called The LED
Alliance, we refer you to ongoing coverage in IOP's new electronic format
LEDs Magazine and the current
feature article
on the topic. When this dispute finds its way to court, which according to Brett
Kingstone is now slated for May of 2005, we'll watch with interest from the
sidelines and report the outcome to our readers. But my commenting on the SV
vs. CK litigation before it went to court reminds me yet again why I try to
avoid getting involved in disputes such as this. There are usually at least
two sides to any provocative story and in any that end up in actual litigation,
it's up to the appropriate courts to decide which side has the most merit, not
the press.
What I do feel my role to be, is to remind the growing number of systems integrators
and those up and down the supply and product chain of advanced LED-based lighting
technologies, whether they be large or small, that they would do well to follow
the lead of the real industry giants, which are Philips, Osram, and General
Electric. Those Gentle Giants aren't battling in court. Instead, they're
gradually integrating solid state lighting into their lighting product portfolios
with a minimum of internal upheaval, and in so doing, they are subtly and effectively
fueling an astonishingly rapid and responsible rollout of ever more creative
products, based on advanced LEDs, in a rich variety of lighting applications.
The spark that could very well change the course of the history of lighting,
however, may well come from the "Mom & Pop Shop" systems integrators,
VARs, distributors and reps that are cropping up in every country, for they
have the ability to change people's attitudes about conventional lighting, one
contact at a time. The Solid State Lighting (SSL) industry, as you'll see reported
in the coming months here in LIGHTimes, is poised to come in to its own
because so many people want to be an active part of it. There are undoubtedly
more growing pains yet to come. Silicon went though similar difficulties and
now it's the compound semi industry's turn with blue spectrum LEDs being the
first to reach true commercial star status reminiscent of when the microprocessor
was first accepted and fully integrated into such a rich variety of applications,
we're still finding news ways to employ them. Silicon microprocessors are the
compound semi SSL roadmap.
Those wanting to integrate our technology into innovative systems should be
encouraged, not discouraged. What I'd like to see more of in these and other
news pages in 2005 are more and more application stories and reports of calm,
sensible settlements out of court or... better yet, that professionals
in the field simply work more cooperatively and honestly from the outset rather
than waste precious time and resources fighting one another.
Happy Holidays Everyone, and May 2005 Bring Abundant Good News to Us All
If you have questions about
the solid state lighting and compound semiconductor industries or
have
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