Early in May, Luxlite, Epistar's sole distributor in China, has sent out an announcement of price adjustment, listing a number of reasons for price increase, including continuingly increased raw materials and manpower costs.  （Official announcements from Luxlite, Smalit and Rishang regarding the rise of LED package price） Chinese LED chips manufacturers San’an Opto and HC Semitek followed suit Epistar’s lead in raising LED chip prices, which was considered as an early sign of recovery from the heated price war since 2014. Major...

Changxin, a guest writer for LEDinside highlights several market trends ahead of the upcoming Guangzhou International Lighting Fair, including a thorough analysis of why the industry has escaped being sucked into the vicious cycle of low price wars this year.

According to LEDinside, a research division of Trendforce, investigation on the latest LED light bulb retail price showed that global LED light bulb retail price remained volatile in January 2013. The retail price of 40W equiv. LED lamps increased by 4% to USD19.4. Fewer new products were introduced in each region, and fluctuation in the price of original products increased. The average price of 60W equiv. LED lamp fell by 4.3% to USD29.6. Prices declined most significantly in the Japanese market.

According to price surveys by LEDinside, a research division of TrendForce, affected by dwindling Q1 inventory and Q2 rush orders, LED package price for the backlight application quotes has eased in Q2, with a decline of approximately 3%. On the LED lighting market, 5630 packages were pulled from use in backlight applications, to be used in lighting instead. The sudden volume increase resulted in price slashing for this quarter’s low to mid power LED packages, with an average decrease of around 10%. Q1’12 LED Price Review Due to relatively high Q...

According to the latest price survey by LEDinside, a research division of TrendForce, due to weak LED demand in 2Q11, the prices of TV backlight (5630) and high-power LED continue to drop. As for the outlook in 3Q11, the downturn of TV backlight (5630) will most likely continue. In addition, because of the drastic plummet in 1H11, the prices of high-power LED see a mild drop in the near term.

Based on the survey of LEDinside, the LED research division under TrendForce, LEDinside indicated that the speed of LED market demand recovery in the first quarter of 2011 is lower than expected. Affected by inventory adjustment of the large-sized panel display market and the LED lighting market, LED manufacturers are facing the pressure of price reduction.

According to the latest price survey by LEDinside, an LED research division of TrendForce, in 2010 Q4, demand from LED applications still has not recovered, including continued inventory adjustment of large-size panels and lower-than-expected demand from general lighting. As a result, pressure of LED price decline extends from 2010 Q3. Among them, price of LED for large-size panel applications fell by 5% -9%, with most substantial decline in TV backlight applications; high power LED lighting applications declined by more than 12%. Due to relatively stable demand from mobile phone applications, LED prices in this segment are fairly stable with a mere 3% seasonally adjusted decrease.

LEDinside, the LED industry research institute has released its latest LED price trend report, showing that the LED price plummeted sharply in Q3 2010 due to the sudden decline in the LED application demand including inventory adjustment resulting from less-than-expected large-size panel demand and sluggish lighting application demand.  The LED price for large-size panel application fell around 11-16% while the high power LED for lighting application slumped more than 17%. As for the mobile application, LED price kept roughly flat with about 3-4% seasonal erosion thanks to the relatively stable demand.

LEDinside, a research division of Trendforce Corp., has made the latest price trend report, pointing out that the LED price for backlight application remained stable in Q2 due to a robust demand and shortage of upstream materials. It predicts that there should be limited pressure to lower the price in Q3 as the supply of LED materials gradually stabilizes and large-size backlight application demand continues.

LED Price Trend in 1Q10 According to LEDinside's price trend report, LED supply and demand are fairly stable in the first quarter of 2010. There is a seasonal proce erosion of 2-5% across backlight applications. For LED lighting application, the QoQ price erosion of high power LED appeared to be more servere, over 10%, due to invantory adjustment.

As previously mentioned, the LED-backlit LCD TV will lead to a reshuffle in China’s color TV market, and China’s local brands have taken various measures, such as price cuts, in order to compete against foreign brands whose prices have already been reduced. Is it true that the price of the LED-backlit LCD TV will fall?

According to LEDinside’s latest price trend report, the growing shipment in LED backlight and lighting application led to a shortage in the chip supply. As a result, the white LED prices remained flat in 4Q09: Prices for backlighting dropped slightly by 1-3%, while prices of high power LEDs remained stable.

In 3Q09, the increasing demand in LED backlight for NB and TV led to a shortage in the supply of LED chips, and stabilized their prices, only the white LEDs dropped slightly. Looking forward to Q4, as the capacity of upstream chips has not ramped up in time, and demand has not been met, LEDinside projects that the prices will likely remain flat amid the supply shortage. Similarly for white LEDs, the insufficient chip capacity limits price decline, and LEDinside indicates that the LED chip shortage and price stability is expected last till 1Q10.

According to the industry research institute LEDinside, as demand for LED TV and LED NB expands, LED chips are running short of supply during the second quarter of this year, which has resulted in a more stable price of white LED compared to that of 2008.

Although the advantage of using LED light bulbs is “Saving Energy”; its current market price and energy-saving effect still cannot compete with the compact fluorescent lamp’s. Yet, if the luminous efficiency of LED light bulbs can reach 80 lumens and its price can decrease by 40%, the cost of LED light bulb can catch up with that of the compact fluorescent lamp. In terms of the current production process of LED manufacturers, the demand of LED light bulbs will probably dramatically increase by 2010.

To analyze it by the approach of cost variancesIn order to investigate how much energy will be saved by using compact fluorescent lamps and LED light bulbs, “LEDinside” has conducted a survey on the prices and specifications of compact fluorescent lamps and LED light bulbs. Some incandescent lamps have also been used for in-depth comparison. The comparable standards include “luminous efficiency”, “ power cost”, “lamp cost”, and the “total cost”.

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