Bridgelux Broadens Market Reach at HK Lighting Fair

The American LED array lighting maker looks to tap China market

Bridgelux, headquartered in Livemore, California and reportedly the world's sole supplier of LED devices dedicated to general-lighting solutions, was a first-time exhibitor at the Autumn edition of the Hong Kong International Lighting Fair 2010. The company's vice president for business development, Keith Scott, said in an interview with the CENS Lighting magazine that the comapny began to implement a broader market outreach in 2010 after preparing its sales force the previous year. Excerpts from the interview:

Q: Many of your competitors have participated in this show for many years, but I don't remember ever seeing Bridgelux here before. Does my memory deceive me?

A: No. This is our first time at this show.

Q: Why didn't Bridgelux come to this show before?

A: Bridgelux was founded in 2002 as a chip company and in 2008 we began manufacturing LEDs. In 2009, we were busy developing product lines, hiring sales teams, and bringing on distributors. This year is the first year we've started a broader market outreach, including trade shows. So, we did Light+Building in Europe [Frankfurt] and we did Lightfair in the United States. We came to the Hong Kong show this year becasue we believe it is one of the world's big lighting shows and we will continue the process by going to the Guanghzhou show next year.

Q: Most of your rivals send people from their Asian headquarters to display their latest technologies at this show, but Bridgelux is represented by people from its U.S. headquarters. Does that mean the company has yet to set up an Asian operation?

A: No. Not yet. We've been a [chip] die company for a long time, operating out in California. Last year we began setting up a sales team and representatives. This year, in 2010, we've hired a very strong sales team and strong distributors as well in Asia. Also, we are in discussions with potential Chinese partners and part of that [process] could include opening a headquarters in China, because we are very aware that China is a global center right now of lighting in general and also LED. So, we're just figuring out how to meet that boom.

Q: Bridgelux has claimed a sole dedication to LED solutions for general lighting, whereas most of its rivals supply solutions for various applications in addition to general lighting. Doesn't your company think it is putting all of its eggs in one basket?

A: Bridgelux is still a relatively small company. When we entered the LED market we made a very cautious decision to focus only on general lighting. We made the decision based on market opportunities for near- and longer-term growth and, in part, what [kind of] LEDs we want to make. If you look at our competitors' products, [you see that] they are just mellow LEDs used for lighting, backlights, and signage. We believe they never saw that LED is really an average light source and it's not really optimized for specific markets. But we think that what the lighting market really needs is bright light sources. So, since we have limited resources and are a small company, that really gets us focused on the highest-quality light sources possible that address everything from low-lumen light bulbs all the way to products that can do high-lumen streetlights. So, at this point in time, you're correct—we are extremely focused on what we think is going to be a US$100 billion lighting market. For us, that is enough right now.

Q: Many LED manufacturers, whether they are long-established or new to the industry, are striving to equip themselves with integrated manufacturing capability which allows them to make almost everything from epi-wafers and chip dies to packages and modules and even lighting fixtures. Is that development worrying to dedicated manufacturers like Bridgelux, which specializes in chip dies and modules?

A: We're actually a very big die company, meaning we supply a very high volume of dies to customers. However, when we made the decision to build LEDs, we saw that Philips bought the luminaire company Genlyte in the United States and already has Philips Lumileds in Europe. Also, we saw that companies like Cree have begun selling luminaires and light bulbs themselves.

We realize that many people in the lighting market have become very nervous about these companies. They say: You cross the line. Now their suppliers have become their competitors. But actually, this development is very helpful for us. For example, luminaire manufacturers who bought LEDs from companies like Cree and Philips Lumileds would say: Now these guys are my competitors and can take over my business using blurred industry lines. So, I gotta not support them and I gotta stop buying LEDs from these guys.

So, we made a very cautious decision when we decided to enter the LED industry. We sell the LED dies, arrays, and modules you've seen at this booth. But we do not cross the line to sell lamps and luminaires. We see people are trying to make these lines blurry. But we're very clear about where we stand. We think the lines should not be crossed today. It's best for our business to stay on this side of the line, not on the side of lamps and luminaires.

Q: People say that one of the major reasons for setting up an integrated manufacturing capability is that such capability can help LED manufacturers keep costs down, especially when they cash in on their massive production volume of luminaires to go into in-house mass production of LED devices. So, how is your company going to make products competitive while staying clear of lamp and luminaire manufacturing?

A: That's a good question. The LED is the most expensive part of the lighting system, and the chip is the highest-cost device. Since our products are vertically integrated from chips all the way to LEDs, we're able to put together a very low cost structure and our chips are priced very competitively in the market. We also believe that the LED array itself is the lowest-cost way of making an LED. What many of our competitors are doing is just putting a single emitter, an individual optic lens, and circuitry on a big board. And all that becomes very expensive compared with the array itself. Also, we control R&D and manufacturing of our dies as well as packages on our own. That's how our arrays can stay competitive in the market.

We believe that we can go up all the way from die through LED to module with a very low cost structure. Also, we believe existing luminaire manufacturers like Cooper Lighting in the United States have the lowest cost structure for manufacturing luminaires in cooperation with contract suppliers of light sockets, light ballasts, and finished parts, whether they are in China or not. Our job is to supply light sources and, possibly, light modules. When we put all these elements together, we are making lighting systems at very low cost. We believe this is the best combination.

And we believe that when our competitors are crossing industry lines into luminaire and bulb manufacturing, they are getting into an area that will make their production very expensive because they're going to be very low volume. Maybe some will survive over five years and their volume will be enough. But in the meantime, the established luminaire manufacturers are going to have much lower costs and we can partner with them. We have low-cost light source [production] and they have low-cost luminaire manufacturing. We think that's the best combination to bring total system costs down.

Q: How big is Bridgelux's customer base now?

A: We have hundreds of manufacturers of luminaires worldwide.

Q: Will your company continue seeking partnerships with luminaire manufacturers?

A: Yes. We'll talk with every single manufacturer on the planet. What we do is work with them to help them put together these high-quality lighting systems at the lowest cost. We help them with thermal, we help them with driver, and we help them with optic lens. We want to accelerate the adoption of LED technology. So absolutely, we will cooperate with more and more manufacturers.

Q: Will they include Foshan Lighting and TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.]? I heard that TSMC is a shareholder in Bridgelux; isn't it?

A: With Foshan, yes. There was an announcement several months ago on our partnership with Foshan Lighting. Absolutely, we will continue the relationship.

As to TSMC, it's hard to say. You know TSMC is doing its own thing, just like Samsung is doing its own. Of course, we can talk. I mean we go to their booths and they come to our booth. We talk to each other. Right now, the market is so big that we can collaborate if we find the right way [to do it]. So, yes, there is always opportunity to do that. But in the near term, our core customer targets are luminaire manufacturers. So when you talk about TSMC, it is a new entrant, right? We're really looking to work with established manufacturers at this point.

TSMC is not a direct Bridgelux shareholder. We talked with many, many possible investors. One time we talked with TSMC on possible investment and that made news in Taiwan. But unfortunately, it was misquoted. We were founded by venture capital funds and maybe TSMC was an investor in one of these funds. [But] it is not a direct investor of Bridgelux.

Q: So far, has TSMC approached Brigelux about cooperation?

A: How can I say? There have been discussions, obviously. But I really can't comment on that.

Q: In this booth, what technologies is Bridgelux showing to the people?

A: We updated our product portfolio this year. From the LED standpoint, we're showing the latest products. What we're really showcasing here is a kind of hospitality lighting effect for places like hotels; not only LEDs, but the latest drivers, latest thermal designs, and latest optics as well. Additionally, we are showing the lighting module “Helieon”. This is a product that we launched several months ago; it was recognized as the most innovative product in Lightfair in the United States, and won a Technical Achievement Award at Light+Building in Europe.

We developed this module with connector company Molex. It has a socket that lighting-fixture manufacturers can use to plug in their fixtures, just like a traditional socket. Helieon is a very clever product that has very good thermal characteristics and a clever and unique logical content system. That's the primary technology we are showing here.

Q: Many of your company's competitors are making LED devices smaller and brighter while equipping them with better thermal design. What are Bridgelux's approaches to these technical issues?

A: A Bridgelux array is very unique, and that has to do with the die, the architecture, and the substrate we use. We believe that thermal resistance in a Bridgelux array is the lowest in the industry; it ranges from a few tenths of a degree C per watt up to 1.2 or 1.3 degree C per watt. Most emitters range anywhere from three degrees C per watt to 10 C per watt in terms of thermal resistance; and then they have to go on MCPCB, which is another layer of thermal resistance. When you lower thermal resistance, the heat can get out of the heat sink very quickly. [This allows us to] move forward with a concentration on low cost, high quality light sources.

Q: What is the smallest size of the LED packages your company can produce?

A: The smallest we can make is what we call a 240-lumen package, which equates to maybe a two- or three-watt package. Again, Bridgelux mostly focuses on lighting, lamps, and light bulbs, whose luminous fluxes are anywhere from 400 lumens up to thousands of lumens. We make packages for those lamps and bulbs, so we like to think “lumen package of light” as opposed to “watt package of light.” For products below the 240-lumen package, you have to go to our competitors because low-power products are really their area of expertise.

Q: How does Bridgelux distinguish itself from its competitors?

A: Primarily by the array package, by putting many dies in a single package. Most of our big competitors, like Nichia, Cree, Lumileds, and OSRAM, also produce multi-chip packages, but we put many, many dies in a package. It can be 20 or 30 dies. That's how we differentiate ourselves in the market.

Q: What is the advantage of the array approach?

A: We believe that with the array approach, our products can achieve higher-quality light, by which I mean better [color bin] uniformity. Sometimes when you look at an LED, you can see a yellow or blue halo around the edge of the light it projects. But array delivers very uniform white light. Here you can see that every one is very, very white. That's really what we look to do in lighting. As you put 25 emitters on a single board, often it's hard to keep them the exact same shade.

With our array approach we have higher-quality light. We also believe we can significantly lower costs as compared with putting a single emitter on a very large board. For example, this array package delivers 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 lumens with many, many dies on a 55-square-millimeter. Our competitors usually take a half a meter board to do this. A streetlight is very, very big and we believe we can put all the dies in a one small package to deliver high-quality light at low cost.

Q: And Bridgelux's annual growth this year?

A: Since Bridgelux is a privately held company, I don't want to give you a specific number. But we are very aggressive and want to double our size every year in the near term. We think we can do better than that.