The LED packaging market has witnessed steady growth over the past year, says LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. The annual revenue of the global LED package market was $16 billion in 2016, and reached $18 billion in 2017.
According to research director Roger Chu, MLS has carried out continuous capacity expansion due to increasing demand in lighting and display markets. In the revenue ranking of the global LED package market, MLS was seventh in 2016 and climbed to fourth in 2017.
Seoul Semiconductor has benefited from significant growth in sales of backlight CSP, flash LEDs, lighting, automotive products and UV products, ranking fifth.
Nichia remained the revenue leader in the global LED package market for 2017 but has been challenged by its competitors in the field of blue LED. Therefore, the company has been actively involved in fields like wide colour gamut backlight LED, UV LED, blue and green laser and automotive lighting, while maintaining its market share thanks to its patent holdings.
Among manufacturers based in Europe and the US, Osram had the best revenue performance thanks to its long-term and solid foundation in automotive lighting, and recent achievements in infrared sensing. In the general lighting sector, Osram now actively launches new products and outsources the manufacturing of small and medium-power products to OEMs in Taiwan and China, hoping to increase its share in the LED lighting market.
Lumileds and Cree began to focus on niche applications such as automotive lighting, niche lighting and architectural lighting to ensure profitability. Influenced by Chinese LED manufacturers who offer lower prices, most Taiwanese LED manufacturers reduced the proportion of low-profit lighting products in their product mixes and focused on applications with higher gross profit. For example, Everlight has been actively developing automotive lighting, UV/IR lighting and mini LED backlight applications.
On the other hand, Chinese LED manufacturers have developed rapidly thanks to the rise of the domestic market and increasing demand for general lighting products and displays. As a result, companies such as MLS and Nationstar continue to expand their production capacity, resulting in their higher revenue ranking. In addition, in recent years, the financial subsidies offered by local governments in China have motivated a large number of Chinese LED manufacturers to increase their production capacity.
With the cost advantages, these manufacturers have also received many orders from overseas companies. As a result, Chinese LED manufacturers keep moving forward in the overall revenue ranking. In 2017, the market share of Chinese manufacturers in the global LED packaging market also reached 35%, a 5% increase from 2016.
