According to TrendForce’s “Global LED Industry Data Base and LED Player Movement Quarterly Update” report, demand for high-standard LED products in the lighting market will enter a growth stage. Generally speaking, the price of lighting LED products is stable. However, due to the recent rise in global raw material prices, the unit price of products looks to trend higher. Coupled with high demand for energy conservation from governments around the world, the output value of the lighting LED market in 2022 is forecast to have an opportunity to reach US$8.11 billion, or 9.2% growth YoY. In the next few years, the scale of the lighting LED market will continue growing due to the promotion of human centric lighting (HCL), smart lighting, and other factors and is expected to reach US$11.1 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4% from 2021 to 2026.

TrendForce further states, despite the continuing impact of the pandemic in 2022, the pervasiveness of vaccines and the recovery of economic activities coupled with the rigid demand associated with the lighting market as a daily necessity, global “carbon neutrality,” and the growing requirements of the energy conservation agenda, have moved numerous major powers to realize net-zero emissions through measures such as energy efficiency and low-carbon heating in recent years. However, lighting is a leading energy consumer in buildings, accounting for 20% to 30% of total building energy consumption. LED penetration will deepen, driven by the high demand for energy conservation and policies and regulations requiring the upgrade of aging equipment. In addition, smart lighting can also achieve the purpose of timely energy conservation. Therefore, there is strong demand for the introduction of LED lighting and smart lighting upgrades in commercial lighting, residential lighting, outdoor lighting, and industrial lighting, which further drives demand for high-standard LED products including high light efficiency, high color rendering and color saturation, low blue light HCL and smart lighting devices.

The gradual recovery of the lighting market is clearly reflected in the 2021 manufacturer revenue rankings. Lighting LED manufacturers including Samsung LED, ams OSRAM, CREE LED, Lumileds, Seoul Semiconductor, MLS, and Lightning have all posted revenue growth. MLS is still the leading manufacturer of lighting LEDs, ranking first in revenue, with an annual revenue growth rate of 34% in 2021. ams OSRAM, Lumileds, CREE LED, and Samsung LED primarily took advantage of orders for industrial, outdoor, and horticultural lighting last year, posting annual revenue growth of 26%, 18%, and 8%, respectively.

In terms of pricing, as demand in the lighting industry gradually recovered in 2021, facing demand for higher specification terminal application products and the impact of rising overall costs in raw materials and operations, LED packaging factories no longer adopted pricing strategies to capture additional market share, allowing lighting LED product pricing to stabilize and rebound in 2021. In terms of product categories, the average market price of medium and low-power lighting LED products (less than 1 watt, excluding 1 watt) such as 2835 LED, 3030 LED, and 5630 LED, posted an annual growth rate of 2.1~4.4%. For high-power lighting LED products (above 1 watt) such as ceramic substrate LEDs and 7070 LEDs, average annual market price growth was as much as 3.0~6.0%. TrendForce expects lighting LED pricing to further stabilize in 1H22.

TrendForce’s 2020-2021 Global Automotive LED Product Trend and Regional Market Analysis research indicates, the global penetration rate of LED headlights exceeds 60% in 2021 with penetration in new energy vehicles (NEV) exceeding 90%, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. Influenced by growth momentum from increasing automotive market shipments and the rising penetration rate of LED lighting, global automotive LED market value is estimated to be valued at US$3.51 billion in 2021, a 31.8% YoY growth rate. This demonstrates that LED headlights and automotive display LED products remain the main driving force for growth in the automotive LED market.

Although the automotive semiconductor shortage has led to manufacturing bottlenecks among some car manufacturers, since car manufacturers have asked LED producers to continue production, the purchase order status of major automotive LED manufacturers will not be affected before the end of 2021. Among the 2021 revenue rankings of automotive LED manufacturers, the top three companies remain ams-OSRAM, Nichia, and Lumileds. These three account for a combined market share of as much as 71.7%.

In terms of automotive lighting, ams-OSRAM has leveraged stable product quality, excellent lighting efficiency, and cost performance to make it the supplier of choice for the world’s high-end cars and new energy vehicles, including high-flying Tesla among its customers. This year, ams-OSRAM’s automotive LED revenue grew rapidly and has an opportunity to reach US$1.304 billion by year’s end for an annual growth rate of approximately 40.9%. Samsung LED’s PixCell LED has also been successfully integrated into the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, boosting its automotive LED revenue growth to as much as US$121 million with market share expected to increase to 3.4%.

In terms of automotive display backlighting including dashboard and central console displays, not only are more and more car models equipped with automotive display products, the standard is moving towards larger displays with the current mainstream automotive panel product size at 12.3-inches. Further taking into account features popular in the current market such as HDR, local dimming, and wide color gamut shows that automotive LED market demand will maintain a rapid growth trend in the next five years. This will benefit the revenue of Nichia and Stanley with this year’s market share for these two companies expected to reach 23.1% and 6.6%, respectively.

Relying on the high brightness and compact size of their WICOP product, Seoul Semiconductor’s penetration rate of the automotive headlight market has reached 10% and WICOP has been adopted by car manufacturers including Changan Automobile, SAIC-GM-Wuling, and Nio. Revenue is forecast to reach US$155 million with a market share of approximately 4.4%. It is worth mentioning, benefiting from European customer orders, Dominant has the highest annual revenue growth out of the top ten companies in the industry at 46.3%

For more information on reports and market data from TrendForce’s Department of Optoelectronics Research, please click here, or email Ms. Grace Li from the Sales Department at graceli@trendforce.com

As various TV manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, and TCL announced their new models equipped with Mini LED backlights at CES 2021, TrendForce’s 2021 Mini LED New Backlight Display Trend Analysis report shows that total Mini LED chip revenue from Mini LED backlight TVs to potentially reach US$270 million in 2021, as manufacturers gradually overcome technological bottlenecks and lower their overall manufacturing costs, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations.

Mini LED backlight TVs possess a highly cost-effective competitive advantage, as Mini LED backlight costs for the entry-level segment are only 50% higher than traditional LCD equivalents

TrendForce further indicates that, with regards to TV backlight technologies, the cost of Mini LED solutions is about two to three times lower than that of white OLED and entry-level, direct-lit LCD solutions. This cost difference therefore serves as Mini LED technology’s competitive advantage over its competitors in display backlight adoption. At the moment, high-end TVs contain about 16,000 Mini LED chips per TV, divided into 2,000 local dimming zones.

In this market segment, PM (passive matrix) Mini LED TV panels with BLU (backlight unit) still cost about 15% less than OLED TV panels and therefore hold a cost advantage. On the other hand, in the mid-range TV segment, each TV contains about 10,000-12,000 Mini LED chips and 500 local dimming zones, meaning the cost of Mini LED backlight integration in this market segment is about a mere 50% more than entry-level, direct-lit LCD backlight units, making Mini LED a viable alternative to traditional LCD solutions in this segment too. Given the high cost-effectiveness of Mini LED backlight units, TV manufacturers are therefore likely to adopt them as a viable technology and initiate an industry-wide competition over Mini LED TV specs this year.

HDR and 8K resolution will be the two mainstream features of high-end TVs this year. With regards to Korean brands, Samsung’s Neo QLED Mini LED TV and LG’s QNED Mini LED TV, both unveiled at CES this year, are equipped with Mini LED backlights as a performance-enhancing technical feature. These TVs feature not only 8K resolution, but also Mini LED backlight units, which require more than 20,000 Mini LED chips (divided across more than 1,000 local dimming zones, with more than 1,000 nits in peak brightness), in addition to passive matrix FALD technology, which allows for contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1, a significant improvement that puts these TVs on almost equal footing with OLED TVs in terms of image quality. At the same time, China-based TCL is also set to release its OD Zero Mini LED TV, which has comparable specs with Korean offerings and is also equipped with Mini LED backlight units. Going forward, more and more TV manufacturers, such as Hisense and Xiaomi, are expected to participate in the burgeoning Mini LED backlight TV market.

The pace of optimizing Mini LED chips, backplanes, and driver ICs will be key to the Mini LED industry’s rapid expansion

As various manufacturers successively release their Mini LED backlight TVs this year, related companies in the supply chain are expected to benefit as a result. Currently, there are multiple major suppliers of Mini LED components on the market: Chip suppliers include Taiwanese (Epistar and Lextar), Chinese (San’an and HC SemiTek), and Korean (Seoul Semiconductor) companies. Testing and sorting companies include FitTech, Saultech, and YTEC. SMT companies include Taiwan-based Lextar and China-based Hongli Zhihui. Driver IC suppliers include Taiwanese (Macroblock, Elan, Parade, Himax, and Novatek) and Chinese (Chipone) companies. Backplane suppliers include Tawanese (Apex and Zhen Ding Tech) and Korean (Young Poong Group) companies. Panel suppliers include SDC, LGD, AUO, Innolux, BOE, and CSOT.

TrendForce believes that Mini LED backlight displays currently possess a competitive advantage over OLED displays due to the former’s 15% comparatively lower cost. Ultimately, the future development and profitability of the Mini LED backlight market in the long run will depend on the continued optimization of components that account for a relatively higher allocation of backlight costs, including Mini LED chips, Mini LED backplanes, and driver ICs.

For more information on reports and market data from TrendForce’s Department of Optoelectronics Research, please click here, or email Ms. Grace Li from the Sales Department at graceli@trendforce.com