The LED industry broke out and grabbed the big cake market into a price war

Energy conservation and emission reduction have become one of the "top priorities" facing and urgently needed to be solved by Chinese society today and in the future. Not long ago, in order to accomplish the emission reduction tasks in the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”, some regions even adopted extraordinary measures such as “power cuts”. When people are "racking their brains" for energy conservation and emission reduction, LED is quietly setting off a new revolution with its remarkable "energy saving and emission reduction" effect.

Love LED in this way

In the eyes of Others, Mai Hanxin, the general manager of Heyuan Yuexing Lighting, is a wealthy boss, but Lao Mai thinks that he is a salesman. In order to promote LED lighting, Laoma has been running around the country for almost two years and has almost visited all the capital cities in the country.

Lao Mai met the LED in 2007, when a buddy pulled him out of the LED industry. He, who knew nothing about the LED, couldn't just be fooled by his buddies' sweet talk. He decided to invest in stocks and “keep the water out of the water”.

As a result, Laomai, who had been over forty years old, began to "make up for" LED common sense. LED English name Light Emit-ting Diode, translated as "light emitting diode", is a solid-state semiconductor device that can directly convert electricity into light, is the use of semiconductor materials as a new generation of light - electricity conversion medium.

Industry experts generally believe that semiconductor lighting is the “third lighting revolution” from "lamplight to oil lamp (candle)", "oil lamp to incandescent lamp (fluorescent lamp, energy-saving lamp)", and "incandescent lamp to LED lighting". The "fourth-generation lighting source" or "green light source" is characterized by energy saving, environmental protection, long life, and small size.

Let Lao Mai really understand the "magic" of LED is the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games. At the Beijing Olympics, LEDs have been used for the first time on a large scale and have been successful. At the opening ceremony, the exquisite huge scroll, the “Fantasy Five Rings” that glowed in the sky, and the gleaming performance costumes... all this was dazzling and astounding through LED lighting, and Laomao opened its eyes. .

Later, at the National Day 60th Anniversary Gala, 4028 performers dressed as colorful LED light-emitting trees in Tiananmen Square, constituting the world's largest "Light Cube" theme performance area, the beautiful LED lighting effects to reproduce the Olympics Classical, so that Laomei began to LED "intoxicated".

The 2010 Shanghai World Expo has become the world’s largest LED show in history. The Expo Park has also become the world’s largest LED demonstration area. More than 2 million LEDs are used on the one-kilometer-long Expo Boulevard and 1.03 billion LED-chips are used on the Expo site. About 80% of indoor lighting sources in the stadium use LED light sources. In addition, LED displays worth more than 1 billion yuan are used to display rich video content. The Expo will bring the power of LEDs to the extreme.

Lao Mai, who went to Shanghai to see the World Expo, was tempted to “tangle up” with the LED temptation, which further strengthened the confidence and determination of the investment.

Although LED has been "a great performer" in the major national holiday celebrations, Lao Mai has not been smooth in the actual "marketing" process. Many local governments obviously do not want to see him, and even some of them have caused him to "cold." Moreover, with the in-depth understanding of the LED industry, Lao Mai has instead produced a lot of "confusion", making him into a "dilemma" situation.

LED industry "big outbreak"

Over the years, developed countries have paid heavily to support the development of LED lighting industry. In 1998, Japan invested 6 billion yen to start the "21st Century Light Project"; the United States invested 500 million U.S. dollars to implement the "National Semiconductor Lighting Plan" since 2000; the same year, the EU also announced the launch of a similar "Rainbow Plan."

China's LED industry started in 1970. In June 2003, under the support of the national "863" program, the Ministry of Science and Technology proposed the development of a semiconductor lighting project for the first time, which opened the curtain for the rapid development of China's LED lighting.

The first rapid increase in China's LED sales began with the large-scale replacement of urban traffic signals in 2003. Only the signal lamp will drive the high growth of China's semiconductor lighting market by 61%. Under the promotion of “National Semiconductor Lighting Project”, China’s LED industry has initially formed a relatively complete industrial chain including the production of LED epitaxial wafers, chip preparation, chip packaging, and application of LED products. Shenzhen, Nanjing, and Other major cities also responded to the call and spent large sums to set up industrial parks and industrial bases, and issued relevant industrial development plans.

According to Guan Baiyu, deputy inspector of the Department of Electronic Products of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with the acceleration of the pace of domestic LED technology and the rapid expansion of industry scale, China has become one of the fastest growing LED lighting industry, the region with the greatest potential. At present, China has initially formed four major lighting LED clustering areas in the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, the northern region, Jiangxi and the Fuzhou prefecture.

“Guangdong is one of the most developed regions in China's LED industry, and it is set as one of the 11 key emerging industries. In the Pearl River Delta LED cluster, with Shenzhen as the leader, packaging and application development is sufficient, and the packaging output accounts for approximately 70% of the country, accounting for about 50% of the world." Laomai told reporters.

At present, LED is mainly used in some special areas of lighting or special lighting market, such as landscape lighting, industrial and mining lighting, backlight lighting, automotive lighting, railway lighting, and the government in the promotion of street lighting, etc., are also widely used in other fields. According to statistics, in 2008, LED backlights accounted for more than 20% of the market for flat-panel TVs and notebooks, more than 50% in 2009, and more than 70% in 2010. Because of its broad market prospects, the LED industry has rapidly warmed up in China in recent years.

In the past two years, due to the promotion of favorable policies, the LED industry has experienced a major outbreak. At this stage, there are more than 50,000 people engaged in the industry, more than 20 research institutions, more than 4,000 enterprises; of which there are more than 50 upstream companies, more than 1,000 packaging companies, and more than 3,000 downstream application companies.

The outbreak of the LED to a large extent benefited from the idea of ​​launching the “Ten City, Wanhao” LED application pilot demonstration city proposed by the Ministry of Science and Technology in December 2008. On March 16 this year, the High-tech Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology changed the original 10 cities to 21. These cities will receive central subsidies in the future, and LED lighting fixtures will be installed in public spaces such as roads, tunnels, parking lots and gas stations.

Because the price of LED lights is more expensive than traditional sodium lamps, and the one-time investment is relatively large, local governments are afraid to invest in them. This has led to the rapid adoption of LED lamps in the country lagging behind that of Western countries.

Under the government's policy guidance, local governments have set off a wave of rush to build large-scale LED production bases in recent years. However, the small size of domestic LED companies, weak technology, and poor product quality have become obstacles to the development of China's LED industry. This has often led the market into a vicious competition in the "price war."

"Obviously, the vicious competition of LED companies will inevitably reduce the market's ability to absorb production capacity, and may even destroy the market confidence that has just been established. At the same time, the company's qualifications vary, and products vary greatly, which seriously dampens the trust of consumers and often leads to The development of the LED industry has stagnated," said Zhou Cun, secretary-general of the Guangdong LED Production, Teaching and Research Alliance.

In this regard, Guan Baiyu emphasized that in order to promote the healthy, scientific, and orderly development of the LED industry, the development plan for the “12th Five-Year” LED industry should be well done; research and formulation of industrial policies should create a favorable policy environment for industrial development; Enterprise-based technology innovation system; establish relevant technical standards; strengthen the construction and improvement of product testing agencies; establish public service platforms such as intellectual property; strengthen industrial chain interaction and promote the coordinated development of industrial chain; actively promote LED in various fields Applications.

There is no standard, the product is not clear

In addition to the above problems, the LED industry also faces a problem of "testing standards" that needs to be solved.

According to Lao Mai, at present, China has not yet established a standard for LED lighting. It can only use conventional sodium lamp detection methods to detect LED lights, but there is a fundamental difference between the two. In addition, there are also differences in the application standards in different regions, which has led to great resistance when companies cross-regionally develop new markets.

At the same time, because there is no manufacturer in the industry that can absolutely dominate the industrial development, LED is lack of suitable standards in terms of product specifications or measurement. At present, there are a large variety of LED lighting related products on the market, and the products are mixed, resulting in the non-standard market. The diversity of products also makes it difficult for companies to concentrate on large-scale production, which will affect the quality of LED lighting products.

Therefore, in order to make various types and uses of LED light source products, especially the LED road lighting products that have already started up in the market and have huge demand, there can be a correct, reliable, and consistent evaluation system. Therefore, it is urgent to formulate relevant LED standards. demand.

Zhou Cun believes: "Because the LED core technology is developing very fast and the industry cycle is 18 months, a huge change in technology will take place in a very short period of time, which will make it difficult for the country to set national standards, and it will be difficult for the industry to determine the industry. Standards, because the core technology is not in our hands, it also caused our testing equipment and detection methods to be imperfect.This imperfection caused the entire industry to have no standards, good and bad to say, resulting in the promotion and application of products. The problem is that the government does not dare to purchase and apply it on a large scale."

Experts believe that this "user + enterprise + investment company (or bank)" model, the introduction of buyer's credit, with the help of financial forces to share the risk of engineering, to protect the three-party interests of production, consumption and finance to maximize and minimize risk.

Laoma believes that the current EMC model "is the best and complete solution for urban energy-saving and emission reduction."

Because of "applause," so "not to call it"?

However, perhaps because of LED's huge advantages in energy saving and emission reduction, it has made the promotion of LED lighting more difficult and formed a situation of “say good or bad”.

According to industry sources, due to the long life of LED lighting, maintenance and repair costs are low, so that some local government departments are worried that "if you vigorously promote LED, is bound to cause staff unemployment." In addition, the high cost is also an important reason for "difficult to promote."

The person in charge of the Heyuan City Streetlight Institute stated that, in terms of energy-saving and emission-reduction effects, if LED street lights are fully promoted, they will definitely “do more with less.” However, objectively speaking, the cost of LED street lamps is still relatively high. To promote, you must reduce the cost.

"Now the world is talking about energy saving and emission reduction and low carbon economy. LED is an important means of energy saving and emission reduction. The future will be a well-developed industry." For future development prospects, a venture capital company in Shenzhen Chen It is generally believed that "this industry is entering a period of rapid development and it is beginning to mature. There will be some leading companies in the future."

Why did LED fail to develop before? Chen believes that "it is because financial capital is not optimistic about this industry. Now that financial ventures are optimistic about the industry and products, that is, in these three years, it will form a period of rapid development." "As far as I know, at least now Dozens of venture capital companies have come to the LED industry to invest in venture capital.” Chen believes, “We set up a LED guarantee fund and actually made a plan for this industry. There are more than 700 LED companies in Shenzhen. We’ll probably support two. Thirty companies have come to our service platform, and several of them may become leading companies in the electronics industry like ZTE and Huawei."

“In the future, there are several possibilities for the industry: either have their own core technologies and then rise to the level of leading companies; either provide support for these large enterprises; or it will go bankrupt. The number of transitions or bankruptcies will be much higher than the former. Points should also be around 2015." Zhou Cun thinks.

For the future development prospects of LED, Guan Baiyu expressed "prudent optimism." "We encourage the development of a LED industry with broad market prospects and obvious energy-saving advantages. Everyone has fully recognized the importance and necessity of developing this industry, and has a high degree of enthusiasm in capital investment. Also note that there has been a recent trend of overheated investment and there is obvious blindness. To guide the LED industry to develop healthily, scientifically and orderly, and to protect the interests of investors, careful analysis needs to be done."

LED is very energy-saving

The LED consumes only 1/10 of the power of a conventional light bulb, and its lifetime is 100 times that of a conventional light bulb.

Compared with high-pressure sodium lamps widely used in public places such as roads, stations, and squares, the power consumption of LED street lamps is only 40% to 50% of high-pressure sodium lamps. LED street light 100 watts is equivalent to 250 watts of high pressure sodium lamp; 250 watts high pressure sodium lamp uses 1 kWh every 3 hours, and 100 watt LED street lamp consumes 1 kWh every 10 hours.

According to the urban public lighting street lamp 1000, each day is lit for 10 hours, the electricity price is 1 yuan: 250 Watt high-pressure sodium lamp costs 3500 yuan per day, and the annual electricity bill is as much as 1.27 million yuan. The 100-watt LED street lamp saves 2400 degrees of energy every day. It can save electricity by more than 870,000 yuan a year, and its energy-saving efficiency is 68.5%.

The service life of high-pressure sodium lamps is about 4,000 hours. The average maintenance cost per street lamp is about 120 yuan per year. Calculated according to 1000 street lamps, the annual maintenance cost is more than 120,000 yuan. The service life of LED lights is more than 50,000 hours, and normal use can reach more than eight years, and the damage rate is extremely low.

According to surveys and calculations by relevant agencies, as of 2010, if China's existing 1/3 lighting source uses LED lights, it can save 150 billion kWh, and each kWh will be calculated at 0.8 yuan, which can save 120 billion yuan. According to the estimation of the existing power energy structure, it is equivalent to reducing emissions from 25 million to 43.2 million tons of carbon dioxide and reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by 1.35 million tons.