LED industry future development

Since 2015, mainland and Philips and other large companies have started price wars, resulting in the LED market becoming a "Red Sea battlefield," which has led to the consolidation, expansion, and failure of LED companies. The LED industry has entered an unprecedented period of large-scale reshuffle while OSRAM. As an international lighting giant, in the fiercely competitive environment of the lighting industry, there have also been incidents such as the “splitting” of lighting business, the transfer of Foshan lighting shares, the shifting of core business to automotive lighting and smart lighting. The following are the events of OFweek's semiconductor lighting network editorial statistics OSRAM 2015, we can see the direction of future development of the LED industry from the signals released by the transformation of OSRAM strategic direction.

Withdrawal from the general lighting market “dismantle” some lighting business April 22, OSRAM said that the management of the company hopes to separate the traditional lamps and ballasts, LED lamps and system units into an independent company, and will The focus is on LEDs, professional lighting and special lighting equipment, including LED-based automotive lighting.

Transfer of Foshan Lighting Shares On September 10th, OSRAM GmbH, the controlling shareholder of Foshan Lighting's largest shareholder OSRAM Holdings Co., Ltd., and Guangdong Electronic Information Industry Group Co., Ltd. signed a stock sales and purchase agreement with a price of 2.621 billion yuan to transfer 100% shares of OSRAM Holdings Ltd. To the latter, after the transaction is completed, the latter will become the largest shareholder of the company.

Exploiting the second LED plant in Kunshan, the second factory in Kunshan, and focusing on the automotive lighting and display industry On September 9th, OSRAM's second factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province was officially put into operation to further expand its production capacity in the region. The new plant mainly produces lighting products for the automotive and display industries. Wu Shengbo, president and chief executive officer of OSRAM Asia Pacific, stated: “The operation of the new plant will not only meet the strong demand for innovative lighting technology in the Chinese market, but will further enhance our influence in the world’s largest single lighting market.” According to China According to a communique issued by the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of 2014, the number of Chinese civilian vehicles had reached 154 million, an increase of 12.4% year-on-year. Such a huge automobile market will bring enormous opportunities for development in the automotive parts market.

U.S. Builds First SMT LED Module Production Line Osram Adds First Surface Mount Technology (SMT) at its plant in Hillsboro, New Hampshire (which owns the company's automotive lighting business in North America with more than 600 employees) ) LED module production line to expand its manufacturing capacity. It is reported that the LED module produced by the new production line is currently used on the 2016 Ford Explorer LED headlamps. It is expected that other projects will be developed in the future.

Team up with Google to create intelligent lighting systems According to reports, OSRAM and Google have reached a cooperation agreement to integrate their Lightify smart LED light bulb product line with Google's Nest home control system. OSRAM said that the company's Lightify product line in the UK and Ireland has joined the project with Google Nest. The business in other countries will soon follow suit.

It is understood that Lightify is a smart light bulb product range provided by Osram in the residential market and is usually not compatible with traditional lighting. The user can control the light bulb on or off, lighten or darken, or change the color of the light to adapt to the mood by clicking on the app on the phone or tablet. All of this can be achieved through the internet in a light bulb in the same room. Consumers can also program them in advance to achieve these things at some point on a particular day, or when security alarms, smoke detectors, sports equipment, or stock prices are in alarm, the smart light bulbs will flash.

Howard throws 3 billion euros to open up new markets OSRAM plans to complete investments in new technologies and applications up to 3 billion euros by 2020. About 2 billion Euros will be used for R&D to further strengthen OSRAM's technological leadership and open up new markets. In addition, OSRAM plans to invest 1 billion euros in the construction of a new LED chip factory in Malaysia. This will free up more growth potential, both for the dynamic technology-driven general lighting market and for niche markets where OSRAM already has a good position.

Patent Protection and Authorization OSRAM accuses Asus of violating its white LED patent on May 29th. OSRAM announced that it won the first-instance judgment in a patent infringement suit against Taiwan's consumer electronics manufacturer Asustek. OSRAM claims that some of the white LEDs used in ASUS' first-generation Nexus7 tablet infringe its German patent DE19655185. The Düsseldorf District Court granted OSRAM an injunction and ruled that ASUS must compensate for the damage caused by OSRAM to the patent infringement. ASUS appealed against this decision, and Osram initiated enforcement.

In the proceedings, Asustek did not refute the patent infringement. The LED used by Asustek Computer is manufactured by Dongbei Optoelectronics. Dongbei proposed the invalidation of OSRAM patent (DE19655185) in the German Federal Patent Court. Subsequently, ASUS filed a suspension of the lawsuit with the Düsseldorf District Court, but it was rejected. The Düsseldorf District Court held that the possibility of the cancellation of the OSRAM patent (DE19655185) was insufficient. As for Dongbei's patent invalidation lawsuit, the German Federal Patent Court has not made a final ruling. Due to the failure to reach a settlement with Asus and Dongbei, OSRAM has filed three other patent infringement lawsuits with Asustek at the Düsseldorf District Court.

OSRAM Licenses Dongbei Optoelectronics White LED Packaging Patent Osram has licensed Unity Opto's patent royalty license, and agrees that Dongbei Optoelectronics use white core patents from OSRAM including phosphor conversion technology to produce white light. LED package. This technology has been widely used in the LED industry and is based on semiconductor chips that emit blue light that is partially converted to single or multiple colors by suitable phosphor materials.

Following the signing of a patent licensing agreement between OSRAM and other white LED packaging manufacturers, OSRAM and Dongbei Optoelectronics have reached an agreement on LED package patent licensing. It is said that there are more than 20 LED manufacturers in the world that follow the OSRAM core LED patent license.

In addition, OSRAM also agreed to revoke its patent infringement case against ASUS Optoelectronics customers ASUS. The Düsseldorf District Court has injected a boost to OSRAM and stated that Asustek must compensate Osram for patent infringement fees.

OSRAM Majority Shareholders Disagreed with New Business Strategy and Wanted to Sell Shares Siemens, a major shareholder of OSRAM, issued a statement in disapproval of OSRAM’s new business strategy, including the sale of the lighting business and overweight investment in the LED business. The opinions of individual strategies and policies were not clearly stated, but they were dissatisfied with the value of holdings in the hands of the stockholders. They also failed to provide them with information on the root causes of the changes in business strategies.

Siemens stated that as a shareholder of Osram, Siemens is not satisfied with the recent development of OSRAM's share price. Due to changes in OSRAM’s policy, the value of OSRAM’s shares held by Siemens has shrunk from the original 940 million euros to the remaining 680 million euros. According to reports, Siemens felt very disappointed that OSRAM decided to spend 200 million euros to develop white LEDs and did not support the decision of the former subsidiary. And plans to sell 17% of the shares held by the hands and resell them to Asian manufacturers.