The TFT-LCD market has already become a red ocean. Korea and Japan take the lead in the OLED market. In terms of display technologies, Taiwan should seize the chance to pioneer the development of Micro LED if it wants to secure a competitive share in the global display market in the future.

Seeing a future with IoT Technology gradually maturing, Lite-On Technology is making a big push into automotive IoT and smart traffic systems and will showcase its products in January at CES 2018. It has comprehensive 802.11P solutions and is developing solutions that meet the LTE-Vehicular mobile standard.

A group of Japan's researchers, legislators, and businessmen hope to use rare earth metals in the deep sea near coastal area of Japan to make LED products. They aim to use them for the Olympics and Paralympic Games in Japan in 2020, reported the Yomiuri Shimbun.  

Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (HPK) and Nichia on Oct. 11 have reached a basic agreement to build a wide-ranging collaborative framework leveraging the two companies’ proprietary optical and other technologies.

While the public thought Sharp might focus fully on the manufacture of 8K resolution television screens after the first one was made public two years ago, according to the Japan Times, the LCD TV maker now seems determined to step into the market of OLED display by establishing new product lines- one in the city of Sakai, Osaka, and the other in Taki, a town in Mie Prefecture.

Cambridge Nanotherm, producer of innovative nanoceramic thermal management technology for LEDs and electronics, today announces a partnership with Japanese sales and distribution giant Inabata. The partnership adds a global sales and distribution arm to the UK-based company. The agreement gives Inabata worldwide sales and distribution rights for Cambridge Nanotherm’s thermal management solutions across key territories.

Sharp has developed green laser diodes, and are running pilot projects of the lasers in its facilities in Mihara, Japan, reported Nikkei.

According to Nature World News, more than 18 million people in Japan suffer from hair loss, a figure about three times that of U.S., which led a Japanese company to come up with an innovative idea to regenerate hair growth: red LED helmets.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has recently entered into LED technology and patent license agreements with a multinational company based in Japan. The technology license encompasses certain proprietary LED epitaxy, chip and package technologies of the Japanese company. It is accompanied by a comprehensive LED patent license for Osram.

Sharp might be shutting down its LED display plant in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan in 2017, as part of its restructuring efforts implemented by parent company Foxconn, sources familiar with the matter told Japan Times recently.

LED basketball courts that draw virtual court lines, and track players movement was first launched as a concept by Nike House of Mamba in 2014, but Japanese professional basketball teams are leading introducing the interactive courts into real life tournaments.

Indoor crop trials with Innovatus and Delicious Cook provide fresh and safe produce close to customers in the Japanese urbanized areas of Kanto and Fuji

EVERLIGHT filed a declaratory judgment action against Nichia Corporation (“Nichia”) for invalidity and non-infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,998,925 and 7,531,960 in the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Michigan in 2012. These two patents are directed to YAG phosphor being used in LEDs and phosphor concentration. The court on January 19, 2016 denied Nichia’s motions and confirmed the April 22, 2015 jury verdict that all asserted claims of Nichia’s patents were invalid. In addition to the U.S. court ruling, from 2014, EVERLIGHT has continued to receive favorable rulings in Japan and Germany that Nichia’s patents are invalid. 

As part of a NEDO project, Osaka University and Shimadzu Corporation have developed two new types of RGB laser light source modules, including a world-class high-brightness model and an ultra-miniaturized model, and demonstrated their effectiveness mounted on actual devices with the aim of expanding the application of visible light laser diodes.

On June, 15, 2016, in a lawsuit filed by Nichia against Tachibana Eletech (“Tachibana”) and E&E Japan (“E&E”), which companies imported and/or sold Blue LEDs manufactured by a Taiwanese company, Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., (“Everlight”), the Tokyo District Court found that the importation/sale of those Blue LEDs by E&E and Tachibana constituted infringement of Nichia's patent.

Japanese government held a special meeting at its Global Warming Prevention Headquarters to address global warming solutions and implement suggestions issued by COP21, the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris. The government aims to accelerate action plans and strategies.

In recent years, countries around the world are becoming increasingly concerned with energy and environmental issues, which is closely tied with human survival. Low carbon economy has become a very popular global issue. LED lighting’s high reliability, low energy consumption, long lifetime, low pollution, and high quake resilience has made it a globally recognized energy efficient and environmental product. Driven by large market potentials and a positive industry outlook, many countries have launched industry development policies to spur rapid growth in the LED industry. After all these years, which country incentives spurred the proliferation of LEDs? LEDinside will be focusing on LED policies in Japan, India and Malaysia’s.

With the rapid development of global economy, energy and environment has become one hot topic discussed by us. So far, energy and environment problem has been one of the important factors that retrained economic development. Under such circumstances, many countries have launched key lighting projects and in addition carried out RELEVANT incentives and rebates program. As the 4th generation light source, LED is characterized by energy-efficiency and eco-greenness. LED incentives and rebates programs have risen around the world. Here bellow is the introduction to LED incentives and rebates in some major countries.

San'an Optoelectronics announced that it  licensed the U.S. LED patents it recently acquired from a major Japanese company to its subsidiary, Luminus Devices.

LG Electronics has recently announced plans of partnering up with Chinese and Japanese companies to make OLED display TVs more mainstream, according to a Reuters report.

Low heat emission is usually a good feature of LEDs, but it can be an issue in snowy regions.

Enterprises lack of market competitiveness, has contributed to Japan’s long economic slump, according to a Shanghai Stock Information Service report. The number of patent applications slid since reaching a pinnacle in 2000. The main cause has been the very little recognition and compensation Japanese employees have been receiving for their important inventions. Amendments to existing patent laws are expected to further aggravate the situation.

Taiwan topped global rankings last year for LED component output value, and the industry is expected to keep up 14% growth throughout 2015 to reach US $5.37 billion, according to statistics compiled by Taiwan’s Photonics Industry and Technology Development Association (PIDA).

Foxconn might start small scale OLED production in 2016, according to a Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun report.

ON Semiconductor, driving energy efficiency innovations, has announced new distribution channel partner agreements with two multi-national electronics trading franchises based in Japan. Ryosan and Macnica join the roster of ON Semiconductor channel sales partners to help expand domestic sales within Japan and work to drive sales growth in China and other Asia-Pacific geographies.

LED is a fast changing industry. Asian manufacturers have taken their own paths to confront the tide of change. Japanese manufacturers are actively seeking collaboration opportunities with Taiwanese manufacturers, while Korean LED manufacturer Samsung has gradually exited the global LED market. Chinese manufacturers on the other hand are expanding production capacity on the back of government support.

Nov 4, 2014 ---- The global LED lighting market will reach $25.7 billion dollars and its market penetration will increase to 31% in 2015 as the overall lighting market grows to $82.1 billion, according to a new report by LEDinside, a division of the Taiwan-based market intelligence firm TrendForce.

A Japanese semiconductor technology R&D manufacturer Athene has developed a new technology for manufacturing high precision OLED panels, according to a Nikkei Asian Review report.

In order to enhance the market for industrial applications of UV LED curing, Taiwan HPLighting has chosen industry's most advanced high quality UV LED chip and special UV LED packages to make UV LED devices with higher efficiency , uniform light irradiance, low power consumption , long life and environmentally friendly features.

NIKKISO CO. has announced that it is establishing a new factory in Japan. The company will initiate production operations in mid 2014 and install an annual capacity in excess of 1 million units for its UVB and UVC LED illumination sources.