The rapid growth of Southeast Asia market has always been attractive to investors while local exhibitions create collaboration and partnership opportunities for foreign manufacturers taping into the market. This year, Energy efficient technologies were added to the LED Expo Thailand 2016 that took place from April 19-22, 2016 at IMPACT Exhibition and Convention Center in Bangkok, Thailand, including solar power, energy efficient products. Meanwhile, LED and lighting related exhibitions found exhibitors from southeast Asia, including Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

The U.S. Department of Energy's GATEWAY program has released the third report in a series documenting the performance of LED luminaires in the Yuma (Arizona) Sector Border Patrol Area, on the U.S.-Mexico border, which is a high-temperature, high-solar-radiation environment. The first report compared six LED luminaires installed in February 2014 to the incumbent high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting system, and the second discussed the performance of the LED system after 2,500 and 5,000 hours of operation, including unanticipated illuminance changes.

Frans van Houten, CEO: “Philips’ first-quarter 2016 results reflect solid comparable sales growth across our HealthTech businesses and our LED Lighting business, bolstered by the successful launch of several new products. We also delivered continued operational improvements throughout the company, driven by higher volume and improved product mix. Our overall performance strengthened, supported by the ongoing benefits of our multi-year Accelerate! transformation program, despite challenging macro-economic conditions in several markets.

Liquidleds Soft filament LED Lamps are making their debuts in 2016 LIGHTFAIR International. “Liquidleds' new, soft filament lines are made with special polymer materials, using the company's proprietary production process. These inventions, marked by the bendable characteristics of the soft filaments, drastically improves the quality of light and will open up a variety of options for a lighting fixture design," says Michael Yu, CEO of the Taiwan-based Liquidleds.

Researchers at BIOS, developers of world-class LED lighting solutions for the biological lighting market, today unveiled new Zhaga-based LED light engine modules that produce a circadian friendly white light enabled by BIOS SkyBlue™ Technology at LIGHTFAIR International 2016.  BIOS has entered an exclusive agreement with Ledra Brands, a leader in solid state lighting design, to provide SkyBlue light engine modules for a line of next-generation LED downlights that help restore the connection to the outdoors to areas with limited or no daylight exposure. Ledra Brands and BIOS plan to introduce the integrated product line in the third quarter of 2016.

The multi-level MLA (Multi-Lens Array) optical system ensures optimum glare elimination and high visual comfort. Scriptus comes as a surface-mounted or suspended version with various lengths and lumen levels to ideally illuminate differing office configurations. The luminaire is equipped as standard with a DALI control unit and on request with integrated daylight and motion sensors. A Lightify Pro version is also available for wireless, app-based light control. In addition to 3000K and 4000K light colours, a tunable white version will also be available for biologically effective light in office environments.

Revolution Lighting Technologies, a leader in advanced LED lighting technology solutions, today announced that it has been selected by Des Moines University (DMU), an osteopathic medical and health sciences university in Des Moines, Iowa, for a lighting retrofit installing its T8 LED tube technology. The project includes a complete retrofit of all six campus buildings with Revolution Lighting's T8 SEP LED tubes to increase energy efficiency, decrease maintenance costs, and improve quality of light, achieving a return on investment of only 1.5 years.

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) introduces today a breakthrough LED lighting innovation that aims to empower schools to use classroom lighting to improve student learning and attention. The new BLT Series Tunable White Luminaire from Lithonia Lighting® allows both the light level and color temperature to be easily adjusted to the optimal setting for student tasks such as reading or test-taking.

LG Electronics USA has expanded the breadth of its industry-leading LED lighting controls and luminaires featuring ZigBee® integrated wireless technology. LG is displaying the expanded product line-up at LIGHTFAIR International 2016 (booth #3551).

Korea looks to increase subsidies it has been offering to OLED technology -related business projects to remain ahead of Chinese enterprises Reported Korea Times.

GE released first-quarter results last week, with industrial operating plus verticals earnings reaching $0.21 per share, up 5 percent compared to last year. The company said it remained on track to earn between $1.45 and $1.55 per share and return $26 billion to shareholders in 2016.

Biological implants that communicate with the brain to control paralyzed limbs or provide vision to the blind are one step closer to reality thanks to research by Brian Collins, an assistant professor of physics at Washington State University.

Having explored in my last post how we designed a source with very high fidelity, I would now like to discuss in more detail another class of so-called “color-enhancing” light sources. Today, I will make some general statements about this concept, and in a follow-up-post I will talk more specifically about how Soraa products uniquely deliver this enhancing experience.

Today Current, powered by GE (NYSE: GE), announced the acquisition of Daintree Networks, an Industrial Internet provider of building controls solutions for commercial facilities. This acquisition will enable Current to expand its building automation platform and its energy-as-a-service offering to small- and medium-size facilities through the deployment of Daintree’s open, standards-based wireless control systems.

The Toronto-Dominion Centre (TD Centre), the original skyscrapers of Toronto’s Financial District and the largest commercial complex in Canada, is working with North American lighting leader OSRAM SYLVANIA and Gerrie Electric, one of Canada’s largest independently owned electrical distributors, to help continue its mission of sustainability. TD Centre is replacing T8 fluorescent lighting with approximately 55,000 energy-saving and long-life SYLVANIA SubstiTUBE® IPS LED Tubes, saving approximately 2,500,000 kWh annually and $250,000 per year. At 4.3 million square feet the TD Centre, managed by the Cadillac Fairview Corporation Ltd., is one of the largest LEED Platinum certified properties in North America, in addition to being one of North America's largest business communities and home to 21,000 office employees. 

"We not only produce energy-efficient bulbs, but also strive to take the quality of lighting to the next level," says Michael Yu, CEO of the Taiwan-based Liquidleds. He made the comment while marking the debut of the world's first soft filament LED Lamp at Light + Building 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany, the world's biggest platform for the lighting market. "In contrast to the ways most other players broke into the industry," Mr. Yu explained, "we have pursued patent protection for most of our new soft filament lamp technologies. These inventions, marked by the bendable characteristics of the soft filaments, drastically improves the quality of light and will open up a variety of options for a lighting fixture design." The demand for LED lighting market, Mr. Yu added, continues to grow at an increasingly robust pace, reducing the need for traditional lighting products. But the real challenge to the industry will be how to bring new sensory experiences for the consumers through design, how to let creativity roam wild into the world of lighting.

Since the discovery of fire and the invention of light bulb, mankind has utilised lighting mainly to meet their single basic need: to see their surroundings. Flint has been created to change it and surpass beyond this.

LEDinside has released two important research reports this week, in case you missed our research director Roger Chu’s talk at Taiwan International Lighting Show 2016 (TILS 2016) last week, you can find the complete summary of his talk from the contracting Chinese LED chip market piece. In addition, the company has unveiled the top 10 LED package manufacturer rankings in 2015. Nichia has defended the top ranking position, and Everlight edged up one spot. Taiwanese LED package manufacturer Lite-On has also squeezed into the top 10 rankings for the first time, for more details please see below.

Energy Focus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EFOI), a leader in LED lighting technologies, today announced its development of a new generation of “Network-Ready,” dimmable LED lighting products, including dimmable tubular LED lamps (“TLEDs”) that operate in direct-wire mode (without a ballast) and dual-mode (with or without a ballast), an integrated, dimmable emergency backup TLED, and a dimmable luminaire. These products, along with other newly developed products from Energy Focus, will be featured at the company’s booth (#5955) at Light Fair 2016 being held at the San Diego Convention Center on April 26-28, 2016. (See: //www.energyfocusinc.com/wp-content/uploads/LightFair-2016-Featured-Products.pdf).

Authorities of Vietnam capital Hanoi plans to roll out LED streetlight upgrade across the city, and has recently called on municipal agencies to scale up installation of LED lights in public lighting system in the locality to save energy, reported Vietnam Plus.

Korean researchers from Department of Bio and Brain Engineering and KAIST Institute for Optical Science and Technology have been able to boost OLED efficiency significantly by imitating nanostructures found in fireflies, according to a latest paper published in Nano Letters.

Greg McNevin sheds light in this Greenpeace blog entry how LEDs are illuminating invisible radiation levels in Chernobyl and Fukushima. 

“Start-up meets Grown-up” is the slogan chosen by Osram and the Berlin start-up company Bär-Drones for presenting their innovative concepts which will enable drones to be used for filming or for video monitoring of extensive areas. The promising results of this cooperation can be seen in the Digital Factory at booth C34 in Hall 7 during the Hanover fair which runs from April 25 to 29, 2016.

mindSHIFT, a leading IT outsourcing and cloud services provider, selected SmartCast® Power over Ethernet (PoE) LED lighting by Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) integrated with a Cisco network for the build-out of its cloud mounting services facility in Long Island, N.Y. SmartCast PoE is an intuitively simple, scalable and open platform that enables the Internet of Things (IoT) for buildings through better light. The system embeds intelligence to make buildings more efficient and people more productive, while delivering far better light for less energy than ordinary LED lighting systems.

Donna Dederding from Zumtobel reveals the lights used to touch up The Panorama Museum of the Sacred Defense in Iran in this blog entry. The Panorama Museum of the Sacred Defense in Iran is dedicated to the Iran-Iraq war that took place from 1980 to 1988. The historical artworks are highlighted through the minimalistic ARCOS LED spotlight. The museum is due to open very soon.

North American lighting leader OSRAM SYLVANIA is launching the OSRAM BackLED Plus Square Lens, providing superior sign face uniformity in small, shallow channel letters and box signs.  The company has also further extended the simplicity and efficiency of its BoxLED Plus LED signage product line to include accessories to directly retrofit fluorescent T12HO lamps in existing signage. The same BoxLED Plus LED modules that are widely utilized in the signage industry, in both single-side and double-side versions, can now be simply and quickly installed with the BoxLED Adapter System.  They are a great solution for easily replacing T12HO fluorescent lamps utilizing the existing R17d sockets. These new products, along with other long-lasting, efficient LED signage solutions from OSRAM SYLVANIA, will be at Booth 439 at the ISA Sign Expo in Orlando, Florida from April 21 – 23, 2016.

Monocrystal, a global leader in synthetic sapphire growing and processing, today announced its plans to significantly increase its polishing capacity by the end of 2016.

Foreverlamp™, an innovator in retrofit lamp design, will introduce the industry’s first 1000W plug-n-play replacement lamp for Metal Halide lamps during LIGHTFAIR® International.  The powerful LED lamp delivers up to 45,000 lumens at 400 watts providing the most powerful replacement lamp lumen package available in the industry today. The new 1000W lamp will save 600 watts per socket over MH providing an eco-friendly alternative to MH with the simple screw in replacement of a light bulb. 

The U.S. Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office Emerging Technologies (ET) program is announcing the availability of up to $3 million in funding to develop energy efficient replacement lamps in general illumination applications. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 set a 45 lumen per watt minimum efficacy backstop requirement effective beginning January 1, 2020. ET's Lighting Alternatives Maximizing Performance and Suitability (LAMPS) program seeks to create suitable high-efficacy lighting options for incandescent lamps where none exist today.

Fierce competition caused major shifts in the global LED package revenue ranking for 2015, according to LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. Nichia remained the leader, followed closely by OSRAM Opto and Lumileds. Samsung LED and other South Korean manufacturers suffered revenue declines due to the price war and the contraction of LED backlight market. By undercutting each other, most manufacturers ended up with lower revenues last year. Some companies’ revenues also decreased when measured in U.S. dollars due to the dollar’s appreciation.