This column was written while attending the Intertech-Pira conference, LED 2006: LEDs in a changing world. As part of the program, I gave a talk on the use of LEDs in display illumination, particularly in projection and LCD-TV. The main reason I am here, however, it to learn as much as possible about the state-of-the-art in LEDs, in both technical and marketing terms, so I can help update the 2006 LED Projection and the 2006 LCD-TV BLU reports for Insight Media.

On this first day, many of the speakers plus the panel discussion focused on one major issue: What will the next Killer App for LEDs be? Much of the growth in the LED business has been fueled by the use of LEDs as the backlight source in cell phone handsets. This is not going to drive growth in the future, however. Growth in cell phone handsets is expected to be modest in the future, and because of the decline in the average selling price (ASP) of the LEDs, revenue may actually decline, even though unit sales will continue to climb.

Everyone agreed LCD-TV backlight units (BLUs) will eventually consume an awfully lot of LEDs, even if they didn’t agree with me that the BLUs will be edge lit rather than direct illumination. Regardless of their stance on this issue, everyone seemed to agree the volumes in 2006 and 2007 will be small.

Lighting for creative effects is big and will continue to grow, although I am not sure it is in the "killer app" category. On the other hand, when a single installation takes 100,000 HB-LEDs, it doesn’t take many installations for this to be a major market.

General illumination will consume a lot of LEDs eventually but this market may also take a while to develop. And, general illumination consists of many segments, each of which needs to be optimized for use with LEDs. For example, LEDs designed for an office lamp can be put into a luminaire intended for street illumination. Mark McClear of Cree knows this is true because they tried it. Not only was the illumination pattern all wrong, but the luminaire burned up because of the different thermal requirements of the LEDs. Cree went on to design a satisfactory roadway luminaire, which they claim will save highway departments about 50% on street lighting, mainly through lower maintenance costs.

Fabio Nehme of the International Finance Commission (IFC), a division of the World Bank, made the most unexpected suggestion for a Killer App. He said there are about 1.6 billion people in the world off of the electrical grid and these people spend about $38B on lighting, and get a very bad product for their money. Kerosene and other fuel sources supply much of this light, although batteries supply some of it. This group typically spends about 1/3 of its disposable income on lighting, showing how important it is to them. This is a huge potential market and the IFC would like to see industry satisfy it with LEDs (www.ifc.org/led). Nehme said third-world markets for high-tech products can grow unexpectedly rapidly. He used as an example cell phones in Kenya, where the customer base grew from nothing in 1998 to 6M now, with a CAGR of 84%.

Whether the next killer app for LEDs is LCD-TV in America or 1W LEDs for lighting in Africa, there appear to be two universal beliefs at the conference: There will be a killer app and the LED industry will be able to satisfy its requirements. I learned all this on the first day of the conference-what will I learn on the second? -MB

Note: A more complete review of this conference will appear in the November issue of Projection Monthly with Flat Panel Coverage.