Since 2011, export orders from abroad dropped sharply together with a non-fully developed domestic market. Under such circumstance, many downstream LED street light companies intend to find some breakthrough in OLED technology.
OLED is an abbreviation of Organic Light-Emitting Diode, also called Organic Electro-luminesence Display, OELD. It has properties of lightweight and energy saving. This technology was firstly applied on displays. In 2003, OLED technology started to use on MP3 and received positive responds. Compare with LED, OLED was a so called new born baby, having strong vitality and cannot-be-underestimated potential. Facing intense competitive, LED producers started to move their attention in this field.
In accordance with a recent report issued by SME Research Center of Peking University, the total output value of domestic LED industry is around 150 billion yuan in June, 2012. The estimated annual compound growth rate is 25% in next 3 years. The downstream LED applications, like LED displays, LED backing applications, indoor LED lights, will occupy more than 75% market. Indoor LED lights will become the biggest LED lighting market in near future. The estimated annual output value will be 25 billion yuan in 2012 and 100 billion yuan in 2015.
Since lacking of the core technique, most LED chips need to be brought from foreign companies. In most indoor lighting products, the chip cost take over about 60% of total cost. Thus, costs of domestic LED products will maintain in a higher level in short period of time. Downstream market is the fiercest in all LED market. The number of new built LED companies sharply growth recently, more and more manufacturer joint into this battle. Many of them were forced to drop prices, and the profit space was shrinking. Professor Peng Jin, secretary-general of Shenzhen semiconductor industry association indicated that those capable downstream enterprises should not only concentrate on overseas market. Presently, they need pay more attention on upstream, establishing their own LED chip Research and Development Department to create their own LED chip technique. Otherwise, “we are working for our competitors.”
The development of OLED technology also provided a new profit growth point for domestic LED manufacturers. Mr. Xiaofei Gao, President of LED Industry Research Institute felt confident about OLED’s future development. “Compare with LED, OLED can stimulate more creative to meet more individual needs”.