The LED packaging market has witnessed steady growth over the past year, says LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. According to LEDinside’s latest industry report, the annual revenue of global LED package market was US$15.975 billion in 2016, and reached US$18.035 billion in 2017. Based on the revenue of 2017, the top three LED package suppliers worldwide were Nichia, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, and Lumileds, while MLS from China climbed to fourth place thanks to its significant capacity expansion efforts.
The Trump administration on April 4, 2018 published a list of 1300 Chinese exports and proposed to apply a 25% tariff on these products. However, the proposal would have limited impact on LED companies in China and Taiwan, according to LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. This is because the LED products included in the list are mainly intermediate goods, including wafers and backlight products. These products account for only a small proportion of all the LED products that China exports to the US market, while most of these intermediate goods produced by Taiwan LED companies are shipped to China.
The sales of iPhone X turned out to be less than market expectation, so Samsung has lowered the utilization rate of OLED production lines. The tight supply of OLED panels over the past two years has also been eased. According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, Apple has initiated the trend of OLED panels, and it is estimated that the penetration rate of OLED panel in smartphones will reach 46% by 2021. Mini LED is overwhelmed by OLED’s technology maturity and competitive costs, so it might be hard for Mini LED to grow in the smartphone market in short term.
While conventional LED components are used for backlight, Micro LED and Mini LED technology have been used for self-emitting in displays of consumer electronics. Every LED will then stand for a pixel, increasing the number of LED wafers used by companies. It is estimated that wafers for applications using Micro LED and Mini LED will account for 11.4% of the total LED wafers used worldwide by 2022, according to LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. These applications will become a key driver of the market demand.
Smart lighting has been developed for years, but products and applications are not really used widely. In 2017, however, smart lighting has begun to escalate with diversification of products, continuous improvements of technology, maturing ecosystem of industry chain, and active promotion of manufacturers. According to the latest data of LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, the global smart lighting market reached a value close to US$4.6 billion in 2017 with an annual growth rate of 95%. The market size is expected to reach US$13.4 billion in 2020.