Epistar yesterday announced it has agreed with Kaistar Lighting on the licensing of LED filament patents. The LED filament bulb products manufactured by Kaistar and its subsidiaries (including Bridgelux, SINOTRON Lighting, and Interlight Optotech) are licensed under Epistar’s filament patents.

As a popular product in the LED display industry, Micro LED is regarded as a leader of next-generation display technology. A large number of manufacturers at home and abroad have paid attention to Micro LED, which has promising market prospects.

According to TrendForce’s latest report New Display Technology Cost Analysis, Micro LED has emerged as the most discussed topic in the display industry. The capital market and the supply chain are all looking forward to this next-generation display technology. However, from the technical perspective, the mass production of Micro LED still face many challenges, including the yield rate of mass transfer and LED uniformity, etc. Some manufacturers have thus shifted their development focus to Mini LED, whose architecture is similar to that of current LCD and LED displays. No major change in the design is needed. Commercialization of Mini LED is only a matter of time, therefore, companies are all expecting it to become a transitional product before Micro LED is ready for mass production.

The LED lighting industry has seen a paradigm shift, propelled by the exponential urban expansion expected over the next decade and the drive towards ever bigger energy efficiency.

As time is moving forward to the second quarter of 2018, more and more rumblings and updates about Micro/Mini LED emerged and have been circulating in the industry. In February, LEDinside collected and revealed information of Micro LED development from nearly 50 companies around the globe. Here, we would like to share some progress updates released after that from 10 companies.

According to the latest report of LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, while conventional LED components are used for backlight, Micro LED and Mini LED technology have been gradually used for self-emitting in displays of consumer electronics. Every LED will then stand for a pixel, increasing the number of LED wafers used.

Osram is taking the next step in its development of intelligent plant growth solutions by acquiring Fluence Bioengineering, Inc. of Austin, Texas. Fluence specializes in LED-based horticultural systems, using Osram LED chips, for a wide variety of applications including vertical farming, especially in urban areas. Potential crops range from salad greens and herbs to medicinal plants. Osram and Fluence have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

General LED Holdings, LLC (“General LED”) announced it completed the acquisition of the Acolyte Group (“Acolyte”), a New York based provider of fully-integrated LED lighting systems. Acolyte offers ribbon lighting and other architectural lighting products for a variety of indoor and outdoor applications.

With the development of display technology, the panel industry will no longer only focus on the supply and demand. Instead, more emphasis has been placed on the quality and specs upgrade of panels in order to increase the value of display products. This trend has motivated the display panel makers towards better specs, such as high resolution, curved, ultra-thin, lightweight, bendable, high dynamic HDR, high contrast, and wide color gamut. In this way, the displays will be able to present more natural colors and vivid image.

In recent year, Mini LED has undoubtedly emerged as a new sector where LED companies and panel vendors actively enter. The reason is that the traditional LED backlight has been developing for many years, reaching a bottleneck in technology; the profit is relatively low as well. Meanwhile, OLED displays, which feature thinness and flexibility, are invading into the backlight display market. As the result, manufacturers that do not worked on OLED displays have turned to the development of Mini LED, a new product that is highly competitive in terms of function and cost.

Osram has added to its expertise in semiconductor-based optical security technology by acquiring US-based Vixar Inc. Already a technology leader in infrared LEDs and infrared laser diodes, Osram will have a unique breadth of technological expertise and an expanded product portfolio after bringing on board Vixar’s specialist capabilities in the field of VCSEL.

AIXTRON SE will deliver high-end MOCVD technology to long-standing customer Visual Photonics Epitaxy Co. Ltd. (VPEC). The Taiwanese semiconductor foundry, mainly specialized in solutions for wireless and optical device epi wafers, plans to ramp-up its epitaxy production with multiple AIX 2800G4 MOCVD cluster systems to meet the globally growing demand for various photonic and electronic applications.

Molex announced the expansion of its design portfolio of Molex PoE-Ready products, with the addition of Deco Lighting’s PoE-Ready Vector 2 LED light fixtures.

Major Chinese LED package supplier MLS teams up with Taiwanese auto lamp manufacturers to develop automotive lighting. Targets of its early stage development are aftermarkets of rear lamp and turn signal in Taiwan.

Samsung Electronics on April 25 kicked off its Onyx LED cinema screen brand, which aims to deliver deep and realistic black colors to enhance the viewing experience of moviegoers.

LG Electronics announced Monday that it plans to bolster its LED lighting product portfolio by introducing products that emit less blue light and are thus easier on the human eye.

The “blue light” emitted by street lights including LEDs, and commercial outdoor lighting such as advertising, is linked to a significant increase in the risk of breast and prostate cancer, innovative new research has concluded.

At TILS 2018, ITRI showcased applications including flexible OLED technology, an Energy Dome, and smart LED lighting able to detect failures. These applications offer insight into a next-generation lighting environment and highlight innovative LED and OLED technologies.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a Taiwan-based technology R&D institution, displayed innovative OLED and LED lighting applications at 2018 Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS) between April 25th and 28th.

As a regular exhibitor at TILS 2018, LED cooling system provider MechaTronix this time share with LEDinside a few trends it spotted in the horticultural lighting market.

Earlier today, the Board of Directors of LG Electronics (LG) approved the acquisition of leading automotive lighting and headlight systems provider ZKW Group, capping a deal worth more than EUR 1.1 billion, LG's largest acquisition to date. Under the terms of the transaction, LG Electronics will acquire a 70 percent stake in ZKW Group with parent company LG Corp. purchasing the remaining 30 percent.

Lighting Science, specializing in in human-centric lighting solutions, announced the launch of the international versions of its GoodDay A19, GoodNight A19, and Sleepy Baby LED bulbs, and the offering of these products in the UK market. These LED lighting products will be available for both consumer and commercial sale beginning in May 2018, through a partnership with the premier UK distributor, Target Holdings UK Ltd.

On the road to developing autonomous technologies, perhaps nothing is more important than the vehicle being able to see the world around it. To help meet this challenge, Magna and Innoviz Technologies will supply the BMW Group with solid-state LiDAR for upcoming autonomous vehicle production platforms.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $15 million to conduct early-stage, innovative research to drive further breakthroughs in solid-state lighting (SSL) technology. This funding will accelerate the development of high-quality light-emitting diode (LED) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) products with the potential to reduce lighting energy costs for American families and businesses and to enhance U.S. global competitiveness.

As a result of mixed market environments and the ongoing weak US dollar, Osram has adjusted its forecast for fiscal year 2018 and will be accelerating its move to focus on rapidly growing high-tech markets.

Nokia Bell Labs and Osram have teamed up to create the foundation of affordable, high-performance indoor radio networks. In a joint initiative the network specialist and the lighting company have been exploring how ceiling luminaires can be used to create a tightly integrated interior radio network with 5G capabilities. “Our office and industrial luminaires are already networked for remote control,” said Thorsten Müller, Head of Innovation at Osram. “In this R&D project, we equipped them with special broadband radio modules, allowing mobile devices like cell phones and laptops to connect to the luminaire network and transmit data.”

Recently, HC Semitek, Leyard and Changelight have revealed their progress of Mini and Micro LED, and so has Shenzhen MTC.

Concepts of Micro/Mini LED display are more and more popular. Enterprises' developments in this segment also become focuses of the LED industry.

The head of Samsung Visual Display expressed that Samsung Electronics has been researching methods to apply quantum dot technologies to its Micro LED TV.

As Micro LED still encounters certain technical bottlenecks, some companies are currently focusing on the transition technology Mini LED instead. The squad proactively developing Mini LED applications includes panel giants (Innolux and AUO), LED chip makers (Epistar and Lextar), and LED packaging firms (EVERLIGHT, AOT, and Harvatek).