Following leading Chinese LED package manufacturer MLS’s recent IPO announcement, a Bloomberg report estimated the company’s Chairman Sun Qinghuan will be joining the billionaire club after the IPO.

China’s leading LED package manufacturer MLS, which has earned a reputation as “price slasher” in the LED industry, recently announced it will be raising RMB 960 million (US $ 153.87 million) through a Shenzhen IPO to expand its production capacity and increase liquidity, according to a Chinese Business News reports. MLS actions indicates the LED industry is entering another industry restructure phase.

It seems Samsung Display has not quite given up on OLED TVs yet, and has no intention of letting rival compatriot LG Display become a monopoly in this sector, according to a recent Reuters report.

Transparent, conductive, and uniform Ag nanowires (NWs) were introduced to improve the optical performance of GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) by a spin-coating technique. The Ag NWs acted as a current spreading layer, exhibiting high transmittance and low sheet resistance, and ultimately leading to high performance GaN-based LEDs with an ultra large size of 5 × 5 mm2. Compared to the transmittance of conventional LEDs without Ag NWs, the relative transmittance of LEDs with Ag NWs was approximately 90% of the overall wavelength region. However, the electroluminescence (EL) intensity of LED with Ag NWs was much higher than that of conventional LEDs without Ag NWs for injection current above 45 mA. In addition, the EL full width at half maximum of LEDs with Ag NWs was much lower than that of conventional LEDs without Ag NWs. Based on these results, we believe that the enhanced optical performance of ultra large LEDs was due to an increase in the current spreading effect.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, consumer electronics and optical industries, today announced that it has successfully produced the first-ever synthetic sapphire crystal of its size and thickness, meeting a key milestone in its Large-Area Net-Shape Crystal Extraction (LANCE) project. At 36 x 18 x 2 inches of sapphire, this product will serve the demanding needs of defense applications, along with future commercial and industrial applications.

Intertek (LSE: ITRK), a leading provider of quality and safety services to a wide range of industries around the world, partnered with lighting product manufacturer MaxLite to bring its innovative new LED GU24 Puck Lamp to market quickly.

FORLETE photoelectric technology co., LTD is a LED and optical materials. Started with cooling materials research and development and manufacturing and import LED eye optics. High expanding various series of material of the LED light that shield an eye products of technology. The development and design, and to produce the LED fluorescent lamp, the desk lamp that shield an eye, High W lamp tube light, mining lamp and mining plants for business major Standard. 

Vying the lucrative Japanese market, leading Korean LED manufacturer Lumens announced it has signed a joint venture agreement with Japanese company TN Holdings, according to a Japanese media SankeiBiz report.

Orion Energy Systems, a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance, energy-efficient lighting platforms, today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 third quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2014.

Lighting Science Group, a leading global manufacturer of premier, innovative LED lighting products, announced today that it has entered into a strategic distribution partnership with the Fastenal Company. Fastenal, headquartered in Winona, Minnesota, is currently one of the largest Maintenance, Repair and Operations suppliers in the world. As part of this agreement, Fastenal will warehouse and sell Lighting Science’s innovative LED products and solutions to its vast network of customers.

    This post was written by Georgios Tjoumakaris, Marketing Manager, Professional Lamps Utilities can now exceed their outdoor lighting requirements with Philips Ceramalux HPS lamps. These quality outdoor solutions have been proven in many applications, from site & area, urban and roadways across the nation. These lamps are ideal for street and roadway lighting, parking lots and garages, warehouses and manufacturing facilities where low maintenance costs and high-efficacy are desired. A tried-and-true tes...

Pragmatic and multi-functional electronic gadgets on crowd funding platforms are getting increasing attention from the public. Last year the Coolest Cooler, a multi-functional cooler was the top funded Kickstarter project received around US $ 13.29 million, and it seems in 2015 a toolbox with a similar concept might hold potential to becoming the next interest.

Last week leading Chinese LED chip manufacturer San’an Opto approved new MOCVD purchase methods, which will greatly boost the company’s production capacity to 200 MOCVDs (based on 2-inch sapphire wafer production capacity). Major European lighting brand Philips has added its 500 member to its LED luminaires and retrofit bulbs licensing program, while Osram is seeing a revenue uptick in 2015. For more please see below:

The project LOIGB (LED and OLED integration into glass and plastic composites for the use in lighting systems for railway and further applications) has been successfully completed. The results will be presented at LOPEC 2015 (March 4th – 5th, 2015, Munich, hall B0, booth 230).

A young product design team from U.S. headed by designer Mike Lee, has come up with a multifunctional LED desk lamp that can also charge up smartphones when turned off.

Next-generation transparent technology revolutionizes how information is displayed in settings ranging from retail merchandizing to museum exhibits to corporate lobbies

Access Fixtures has announced price reductions of up to 38% for a number of vandal-resistant full cutoff LED wall packs and vandal-resistant LED flood lights. Vandal-resistant LED luminaires provide the durability to illuminate areas that are prone to damage by vandalism or daily wear and tear. With advancements in LED technology, increasing sales, and achieving economies of scale, these fixtures are now available at significantly reduced prices enabling a faster return on investment.

Osram recorded a strong operating performance in the first quarter of the current fiscal year that started in October 2014. With growth of 0.5 percent, revenue was slightly above the year-earlier period on a comparable basis, i.e. excluding portfolio and currency effects. In nominal terms, the company even recorded a revenue increase of five percent to almost €1.4 billion, resulting from the weakness of the euro against key currencies and the acquisition of Clay Paky. EBITA1 excluding special items rose 23 percent to EUR 151 million (US $171.45 million) in the first quarter, translating into a margin of 10.8 percent. 

Nikkiso America, a world leader in the development and commercialization of deep ultraviolet LEDs, has announced that it has initiated shipments of the world’s highest power deep UV-LEDs, featuring three times more optical power output than is commercially available from other sources in the UV-C and UV-B range. The Nikkiso UV-LED business will introduce the new high-power deep UV-LED product line for the first time in North America at the SPIE Photonics West exhibition in San Francisco February 10 - 12, 2015, North Hall Booth #4815. The Nikkiso UV-LED products are designed for applications in biomedical instrumentation and treatment, germicidal purification and sterilization, and industrial curing and printing.

Royal Philips today announced the 500th member to its LED Luminaires and Retrofit Bulbs Licensing Program, representing an increase of 100 licensees over the past nine months and 200 licensees since May 2013. The tremendous success of the Licensing Program, which provides access to 224 inventions and 1,392 granted patents to companies that sell their own branded LED products, is reflective of the rapidly increasing share of LED based sales in the lighting market.

Since rolling out a nationwide incandescent bulb phase out plan in 2012, Kazakhstan has quickly adopted LED products, according to an article published in The Astana Times.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a nano-sized optical antenna that can greatly enhance the spontaneous emission of light from atoms, molecules and semiconductor quantum dots. This advance opens the door to LEDs that can replace lasers for short-range optical communications, including optical interconnects for microchips, plus a host of other potential applications.

The team, led by Nobel Laureate Sir Kostya Novoselov, made the breakthrough by creating LEDs which were engineered on an atomic level.The new research shows that graphene and related 2D materials could be utilised to create light emitting devices for the next-generation of mobile phones, tablets and televisions to make them incredibly thin, flexible, durable and even semi-transparent.

LED lighting manufacturer Illumitex today announced that Illumitex and PARsource Lighting of Petaluma, Calif., have formed a partnership to service the commercial greenhouse industry in North America.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor, and optical industries, today announced the appointment of Hap Hewes as Senior Vice President, Optical. He will lead marketing and business development activity for sapphire products in the aerospace, optical, consumer electronics and industrial markets.

Average day fruits and vegetables are seen in a new light through Romanian photographer Radu Zaciu latest project “The Light Inside,” according to a Peta Pixel report.

San’an Opto’s board recently approved its Xiamen arm’s MOCVD procurement method plans, according to a recent company statement.

The latest luminaire updates for 2015 as follow:

Philips CEO of Lighting Eric Rondolat calls for the importance of ending light poverty.

This week U.S. President Barrack Obama scales up nationwide LED streetlight upgrade plan, aiming for conversion of 1.5 million streetlights. Things don’t look too bright for Cree, as the company slashes 300 contract worker jobs. Philips is also facing a challenging year ahead, as the company’s 4Q14 revenue falls short of expectations, despite its LED business reporting consistent growth. On the bright side, Taiwanese and Chinese LED manufacturers have cast a fairly optimistic outlook for 2015, while Korean electronic company LG has made new breakthroughs in OLED technology.