With technology implement, hospitality industry keeps seeking for upgraded services to create exclusive experiences for the guests. The Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®) provides a platform for experts in both hospitality and technology to connect and cooperate. This year at HITEC, Samsung showcases several products including digital displays and wearable devices to enhance the management and service quality.

One major development for wearable devices is to combine health monitoring technologies for medical application. A Korean research team had developed smart contact lenses to detect glucose; their result was published on Science Advances in January. 

By topping up with technologies, events, live shows and art performances increase the diversity in production and present more and more unique experiences for the audience. LED technology is certainly one of the major applications in the entertainment industry, lighting and LED firms has built up relationships with event production companies or performance venues.

The 2018 World Cup is coming in two days and fans from all over the world are getting ready for exciting matches taking places in Russia. Among the 12 stadiums used as venues for games, Signify has lit up 10 of them including Luzhniki (Moscow), Krestovsky Stadium (Saint Petersburg), Fisht (Sochi), Ekaterinburg Arena (Yekaterinburg), as well as soccer stadiums in Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd and Samara.

Plessey announced its cooperation with a Belgian tomato producer, TomatoMaster with its latest LED growing light product. 

The company has been working on Mini LED backlights application and is preparing production for clients on the third quarter 2018 and by the fourth quarter, Mini LED application could be found in the market.

Artists around the world are combining lighting technology, multimedia and local landscape to attract attentions from visitors and create stunning experiences. 

Signify, formerly known as Philips, announced the expansion of LED horticultural lighting installation with Agro-Inwest, Russia’s rapidly growing innovative company cultivating fresh vegetables. The greenhouses using LED lighting for growing tomatoes will reach the size of 68.5 hectares, equivalent to 100 soccer pitches. 

NASA is bringing the application of horticultural lighting to another level: the space. Aiming to provide fresh food supplies for astronauts off the earth, NASA has employed LED lighting system for researching the efficient possibilities to produce food during space travel.

Focusing on the technology trend of Micro LED and its manufacturing limitation, this year in Micro LEDforum, LEDinside has invited worldwide experts to dissert and reveal the solutions of Micro LED applications. 

Micro LED since 2014 has been receiving attention. The industry is slowly becoming familiar with the new display technology that motivated Apple to acquire LuxVue. However, in 2008 a company already foresaw Micro LED to be a future display trend and started related development despite lack of market appetite. When the market started noticing Mini/Micro LED UK-based optic tech firm Optovate had already patented ideas to render various applications featuring these microscopic technologies.

2018 is a pivotal year for Mini/Micro LED development. UK-based Plessey Semiconductors in January announced its commitment to launch a Micro LED microdisplay featuring monolithic GaN-on-Silicon Micro LEDs. Following the announcement, LEDinside got in touch with Myles Blake, Marketing Director of Plessey Semiconductors, to learn more about its technology platform and product roadmap.

At SID's Display Week 2018 in Los Angeles, glō and Jasper Display Corp. (JDC) will, for the first time ever, demo the world's brightest self-emitting display panel. The industry's brightest Micro LEDs (10 μm), developed and integrated by glō, paired with JDC's new silicon backplane, the JD67E2, make it possible to deliver the high brightness and contrast that will benefit the next wave of watches, phones, heads-up-displays (HUDs), and augmented reality (AR) products.

In March, LEDinside witnessed a Chinese lighting company being caught red-handed for showcasing patent-infringing LED filament bulbs at Light + Building 2018. Slightly later than that, we also learnt Epistar has approached and initiated talks with a few companies for IP collaborations at that fair. At TILS 2018 in April, LEDinside interviewed Epistar and got more details about the matter.

On May 17th, Visionox (Gu'an) 6th-generation fully flexible AMOLED (active-matrix organic light emitting diode) production line, China's first 6th-generation fully flexible AMOLED production line, was put into operation in Gu'an New Industry City in Hebei Province. Featuring a designed productivity of 30,000 substrates per month, the production line can meet the display demands of approximately 100 million intelligent terminal devices.

Osram’s venture capital arm, Fluxunit, has acquired a stake in Canadian startup Motorleaf, an artificial intelligence company focused on bringing actionable, datadriven insights to greenhouse and indoor farm operators.

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has published a new report on the energy and economic performance of LED horticultural luminaires. The LRC evaluated key factors such as power demand, life-cycle cost, luminaire intensity distribution, and luminaire shading. Of particular importance is the fact that the LRC considered the effectiveness of the entire lighting system for a controlled growing environment.

Philips Lighting announced that it has repurchased 338,652 shares in the period May 7, 2018 to May 11, 2018. The shares were repurchased at an average price of EUR 26.26 per share and an aggregate amount of EUR 8.89 million.

In order to conform to the development trend of TVs, and combing with the accurate judgment of the development of the TV market, BMTC has released its global TV backlighting strategy for 2018. The strategy covers a comprehensive layout in terms of technology and patent, which aims to seize market opportunities and strive for market commanding heights.

Philips Lighting announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Shenzhen LiteMagic Technologies Co., Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer and seller of lighting luminaires and control systems for urban and façade lighting.

LED driver IC specialist Macroblock reported a gross margin of 34.2% for the first quarter of 2018, reaching new high over the past two years. The company expects its 2Q18 revenue to increase by 20% QoQ after its driver IC is chosen and successfully adopted in Samsung’s display products.

Samsung Electronics said on May 10 it released the latest QLED TVs in Vietnam, seeking to penetrate deeper into a market with considerable demand for large displays.

Leyard and Planar, specialized in visualization products, announced May 10 that they have completed the acquisition of eyevis, which includes the company Teracue. In line with the announcement earlier in April, Leyard and Planar have completed the acquisition process.

As GE lighting is still a strong brand in North America, it is expected a number of Chinese LED and lighting firms will scramble for the sale. In this regard, LEDinside looked into the Chinese lighting industry and found out a few firms that might be interested in buying GE’s assets.

Philips Lighting launched a new cloud-based Scene management app that enables businesses to quickly and effortlessly change a building’s architectural lighting using your smartphone or tablet. The app, specially designed for use on smart devices, further illustrates the company’s leadership in connected lighting and lighting for the Internet of Things.

Taiwanese LED chip maker Epistar in 2017 went through a financial turnaround and reported a share dividend of NTD 0.8. In wake of lukewarm market demand, the company’s 2Q18 results showed declinces. Its plan to mass produce Mini LED products is scheduled in the second half of 2018.

LG Electronics said Wednesday (May 9) its latest OLED TVs released in the United States come with features that allow them to be connected to the Google Assistant voice recognition system.

While more companies join in the development of Micro LED, only a few are able to manufacture RGB Micro LED chips. Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn is reported to acquire shares of Epileds, a Taiwan-based LED wafer and chip maker, from Catcher Technology, specialized in light metal technology and originally a shareholder of Epileds.

Tuya Smart, a China-based global AI/IoT platform company, is expanding its business with the opening of a U.S. sales and R&D office in Silicon Valley. The company is bringing its one-stop shop solution to device manufacturers so that any standard ‘dumb’ device can be transformed into a smart one, ready for production in less than two weeks.

On May 7, 2018, Epistar filed a patent infringement lawsuit against V-TAC USA Corp. (“V-TAC”) in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on May 7, 2018. The complaint asserts that V-TAC’s LED filament bulbs infringe seven Epistar patents and seeks injunctive relief to halt further sale of the infringing products.