Visible light communication, or LiFi, has provided a high speed internet connection for residents on Graemsay, an island in Scotland. The LiFi network trial project was developed by The University of Edinburgh and pureLiFi. The LiFi trial project began in June 2019 with project named 5G RuralFirst. Before the trial, residents of the island often stock in a connection below 2Mbps. The LiFi network completely improved the connectivity by providing connection which is four times faster. Both outdoor and indoor systems are included in the LiFi trial network. Th...

Sony announced the partnership with Yamaha Motor for a joint development of the SC-1 Sociable Cart, an autonomous vehicle that delivers a new mobility experience. Sony and Yamaha Motor plan to launch services using this model in Japan in fiscal 2019. The vehicle was developed solely for the purpose of providing a new mobility experience, and it will not be made available for sale. The SC-1 is designed to transform what was a mere means of mobility into an all-new opportunity for entertainment. Sony and Yamaha Motor will deploy it to provide fun new diversions at venues s...

In December 2018, Seoul Semiconductor announced that it has won a patent infringement lawsuit against Mouser Electronics for selling LED products that infringe Seoul’s patent. Everlight later responded in January 2019 that it would continue to guard its right and claim patent invalidity against Seoul Semiconductor. However, Seoul’s latest announcement reported that the District Court of Düsseldorf in Germany issued a permanent injunction against the sales of the accused products manufactured by Everlight and ordered the distributor to recall the pr...

The annual Display International Touch Taiwan is taking place this week with exhibitors from all over the world showcasing their latest developments in display technology. Taiwan-based panel makers AUO and Innolux are both showing their innovative display products at the show including Mini LED backlight display, Micro LED displays and more. (Image: AUO) AUO announced that it will unveil several new display technologies covering Mini LED backlit 8K TVs as well as gaming monitors, notebook panels and VR wearable displays adopting Mini LED backlig...

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) announced that LEDVANCE has joined the Light and Health Alliance which aims to enhance human health and wellbeing with indoor lighting. The mission of the Light and Health Alliance is to bridge the science of light and health to practical applications, and to provide objective information grounded in basic and applied research. The Alliance works to generate and disseminate new knowledge on the topic of light and health via outreach and education. (Image: LRC/LEDVANCE) LEDVANCE will join other members of ...

As LED technology develops continuously and LED die-size shrinks gradually, the product application has become more and more diversified. Because of the saturated general lighting market, the display market seems to be the next main battlefield for LED makers. The well-known LED technology for display includes Mini LED backlight unit, Mini LED RGB and Micro LED. This year, most of the LED display makers try to show their advanced technologies by making fine pitch display with Mini RGB LED. At InfoComm 2019 in Orlando, US, most of top companies e...

Based in the U.S., Black Dog LED was founded in early 2010. The company focuses on indoor gardening, has various serious of LED grow lights, and is continuing its research in latest plant grow lighting technology. LEDinside recently had the honor to interview Black Dog LED’s CEO Noah Miller, to get a deeper insight of the product development and market potential of horticultural LED lighting. LED light has obvious advantages in gardening compared to HID Talking about the advantages of LED grow light, Miller gave us an example of LED VS. H...

A research shows that birds exposed to artificial light at night might increase the spread of West Nile Virus (WNV). West Nile Virus that infects birds and other animals including humans. The virus can cause West Nile fever for people and sever disease in horses. The virus is transmitted by birds and mosquitos. The study led by Meredith Kernbach, a PhD student in the University of South Florida College of Public Health, suggested that wild birds who carry the virus would remain infectious two days longer if exposed to artificial light at night time, leading to h...

The International Symposium on Automotive Lighting 2019 will take place from September 23 to 25 in Darmstadt, Germany. Inova Semiconductors, a member of the ISELED Alliance, is going to present its innovative solutions for automotive lighting with a focus on interior lighting during the event. Inova will exhibit the first available products and applications based on ISELED technology. A "Carbox" demonstrator illustrates the interaction between dynamic light and image content, opening up new possibilities for driver assistance and infotainment systems. A...

Lextar will present Micro LED display and its Mini LED series products at Touch Taiwan during August 28 to 30. The vertical integrated LED company is also releasing a new series of Mini LED ready for mass production. The products include I-Mini Blue and UFP I-Mini RGB display with a pitch size of 0.7mm. Lextar will exhibit its latest development, a 5.1-inch transparent AM Micro LED display. According to Lextar, the Micro LED display can achieve a brightness of 30,000nits by assembling flip chip Micro LED on the transparent glass. Meanwh...

Being an important component in display technology, LEDs have been continuing the improvement in power-saving and display capabilities. Mini LED backlights, Mini LED RGB and Micro LED also appear on the stage to meet various requirements of products targeting different applications. Mini LED backlights, which have been officially introduced into the market in 2H18, will be facing off OLEDs soon and become a new opportunity in the panel industry, according to LEDinside’s 2019 Mini LED and HDR High-Class Display Market Report. EPISTA...

Osram announced that its Managing Board and Supervisory Board have waived the existing standstill agreement with AMS and signed a cooperation agreement. This clears the way for a voluntary public takeover offer by AMS. The offer, which is expected to be valid until the beginning of October, amounts to EUR 38.50 (US$ 42.70 ) in cash per share, with a minimum acceptance level of 70 percent. Olaf Berlien, CEO of OSRAM, commented, “Our shareholders now have two offers on the table, allowing them to choose between the different business concepts.” ...

LED manufacturers all over the world have suffered from low profit and market uncertainty due to continuous price competition and on-going trade dispute. Besides cutting off lighting business, LEDinside observed the strategies developed by worldwide LED companies under the difficult circumstance to alleviate impacts on their business. Micro LED and Mini LED: the Turning Point for Taiwan LED Manufacturers Taiwan-based LED companies were challenged by Chinese competitors with their low price strategies in the past few years. However, Mini LED and Micro...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Next Generation Lighting Systems (NGLS) program announced the launch of the next phase of evaluations of indoor connected lighting systems. The new phase will include the upgrade of existing systems as well as the addition of new systems that are also marketed as easy to install and configure. The systems will be evaluated over a two-year period for installation, configuration, control operation, lighting quality, energy savings, and user satisfaction. The initial phase began in 2017 which evaluated 12 systems installed in wor...

Crop One, the US-based vertical farm company, announced that it has teamed up with Sino-Science North America Photobiotech (SNAP), a vertical farm technology providers, to jointly develop future vertical farm projects. SNAP is the owner of SANANBIO, which is affiliated and supported by LED wafers and chips manufacturer Sanan Optoelectronics. According to Crop One, it will provide its plant science and controls technology in future projects while SNAP will supply LED lighting and its modular growing systems as well as fully automated vertical farm sy...

Cree posted financial results of its fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 and the whole fiscal year. For fiscal 4Q19 which ends on June 30, 2019, Cree registered a revenue of US$251.2 million for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, down by 5% YoY and 8% QoQ. GAAP net loss from continuing operations for the fourth quarter was US$34.6 million, or US$0.33 per diluted share. On a non-GAAP basis, net income from continuing operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 was US$11.5 million, or US$0.11 per diluted share, compared to non-GAAP net income from continuing o...

The 8th Touch Taiwan will begin next week on August 28 at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall. This year, with the expanding exhibition zone of Micro LED and Mini LED Product and Solution, many expect to see innovative technologies and applications at the show. There will be 37 exhibitors including Epistar, Lextar, Macroblock, ASM Pacific Technology, Tory, Topcon showcasing their latest development of Micro LED and Mini LED at Touch Taiwan 2019. Exhibitors of the supply chain will present their technology related to Micro/Mini LED from upstream ...

Many LED producers have turned their focus to automotive applications for higher profit. The ongoing development of autonomous driving technology and next generation automobile also creates new requirements for automotive lighting as well as automotive displays, leading to new opportunities for LED makers. Exterior lighting becomes even more important for driverless cars, as they need to pass information and communicate with each other as well as remind pedestrians of their movement. Deployment of advanced LED technology enables cars to provide details when they are about to ...

Velodyne Lidar announced that it has filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against Hesai Photonics Technology and Suteng Innovation Technology, which is also known as RoboSense. (Image: Velodyne Lidar) Velodyne Lidar accused the Hesai and RoboSense of violating of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 which makes unfair methods of competition and importation of certain products into the United States unlawful. Earlier this week, Velodyne also filed patent infringement complaints against Hesai and RoboS...

Signify announced its partnership with AppHarvest, a controlled-environment growing facilities builder to help the company increase efficiency and boost yields using fewer resources in their 25 hectare greenhouse in Kentucky, USA. With the partnership, the greenhouse will be fitted with a hybrid LED lighting system, utilizing Signify’s Philips GreenPower LED toplighting compact and Agrolux high pressure sodium lighting. AppHarvest will grow tomatoes and cucumbers in its facility, which will be completed in the second half of 2020. The facility uses a unique ...

Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities, is realizing 50% electricity cost savings by upgrading 182,000 streetlights with new LEDs. The new LED lights also improve the safety of the citizens on the streets of Belo Horizonte. The LED upgrade project is part of Brazil's first major public lighting public-private partnership between Belo Horizonte Iluminaçao Publica (BHIP) and Signify. The project started in 2017 with a survey of all the public light points, providing information of each street and scheduling their timely delivery and instal...

3D LiDAR provider Cepton Technologies announced a partnership with ThinkReps, a physical security manufacturers' representative. As part of this strategic collaboration, Cepton’s sales and marketing efforts will be supported by ThinkReps’ area team to drive sales of Cepton’s Smart Lidar solutions for the physical security, smart cities and IoT industries. Through the partnership, ThinkReps’ security partners will have the opportunity to integrate Cepton’s LiDAR technology into a wide variety of security solutions. (Image: Cept...

US-based architectural LED lighting manufacturer Luminii announced the acquisition of its competitor Optic Arts, based in Los Angeles. With the acquisition, Luminii will include Optic Arts’ product lines into its portfolio, reinforcing its commitment of growing, according to the company’s CEO, Jeff Parker. (Image: Luminii) Parker noted that the distribution strategies of Luminii and Optic Arts are complementary and will remain in place after the Optic Arts acquisition. The team from Luminii remains agent focused, calling on the specification ...

Automotive component supplier Magna announced the opening of a new electronics manufacturing facility in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, USA. The facility consolidates three nearby locations into a single site which occupies 21,367.7 square meters (230,000 square foot). (Image: Magna) With nearly US$ 50 million investment, Magna expects the new facility to accelerate large-scale deployment of future technologies such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), advanced robotics and Micro LED lighting. Magna built partnership with Micro LED technology p...

UV LEDs are recently replacing mercury light as UV light source for disinfection applications. German researchers have developed a UV LED based disinfection system to purify brewing water and clean the caps for bottled beer and soft drinks. Researchers at the Advanced System Technology (AST) branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Ilmenau, Germany, have cooperated in collaboration with PURION, a UV technology solution provider, to create UV LED based purifying module to destroy germs...

Plessey, the British optoelectronic technologies developer who currently focuses on Micro LED technology for AR/MR display applications, announced the appointment of Dr. Edward H. Frank to its Micro LED advisory board. Dr. Frank joins Plessey’s advisory board as part of the rapid development of Plessey’s Micro LED technology. Dr. Frank was CEO and co-founder of Cloud Parity and had served as Vice President of Macintosh Hardware Systems Engineering at Apple as well as Corporate Vice President of Research and Development at Broadcom....

Osram said that it has begun talking with AMS on a Business Combination Agreement since August 13, aiming a publication of AMS' takeover offer before the end of September 5. According to Osram, both parties will continue to carefully assess the details the agreement and hope to reach the common goal that ams will be able to start its tender period during the offer period of the existing takeover offer from the financial investors Bain Capital and The Carlyle Group, thus before the end of September 5, 2019. AMS submitted the proposal to Osram on October 11...

According to the newly released 2019 Global Automotive LED Market Report- Passenger Car and Box Truck report by LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, the global automotive market has been showing declines since 2018 amid global trade frictions and economic recessions, and this also caused revenue for automotive LED products to grow at a slow pace. Global automotive LED revenue is forecast to register a CAGR of 7% during the forecast period 2018-2023. Despite the continual decline in car sales, the penetration rates of LEDs in various major automotive lighting...

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that addition tariffs on certain Chinese-made consumer items will be delayed until December 15 for avoiding the holiday shopping season, according to President Trumps. As a result, USTR has announced two new lists for products with extra tariffs effective on September 1, 2019, and those effective on December 15, 2019. Several items were removed from the tariffs list due to health, safety, national security and other factors, according to USTR. Original list has covered LED products include “Ball...

Mini LED and Micro LED technologies have been the focal point of many Taiwanese LED manufacturers as they attempt to get away from severe price competition with Chinese companies. However, as Micro LED requires higher technology integration as well as production cost, Mini LED becomes an easier target. Vertical integrated LED company Lextar has begun organization restructure since 2018, cutting off LED fixture manufacture and prioritizing Mini LED research and development. Mini LED backlight and signage are the two major areas focused by Lextar. ...