Bright Outlook Seen for Taiwan's LED Industry in 2014

Taiwan's leading LED makers are expected to enjoy sharply increased revenues in 2014, thanks mostly to surging demand for LED lighting worldwide.

Everlight Electronics Co., Epistar Corp., Lextar Electronic Corp., and Ledlink Optics Inc. have recently experienced an increasing influx of orders from American and European lighting heavyweights, prompting them to predict a sales surge in the normally slow first season.

Officials at Everlight, the world's No.1 LED packager by volume, point out that the worldwide LED lighting market began expanding in 2013, largely because of government subsidies for LED purchases in major economies and the improved cost-performance ratio of LEDs. They predict that the global market for LED lighting will double in size this year.

After acquiring a German LED lighting company in 2013, the company expects sales from lighting products to account for 30% of its total revenue in 2014, up from around 20% last year.

The acquisition of lamp maker Wellypower Optronics Corp. is helping Lextar boost its shipments of LED light tubes and panel lights to Asian economies, including Japan. Chip-on-board (COB) and high CRI (color rendering index) LED devices are becoming the focus of the company's LED packaging development, and COB sales are projected to triple in 2014.

According to industry insiders, lighting will overtake backlights as the top application of LEDs for the first time in 2014, putting LED manufacturers in a good position to rake in profits and negotiate prices with lighting-fixture makers.

The insiders say that LED lighting will take much longer to penetrate the market than did LED TV backlights, because the world's TV market is dominated by only a handful of multinational brands while the global lighting market is divided into many different regional leaders.

Foreign institutional investors too are optimistic about the prospects of the LED lighting industry this year, and are increasing their investment in the island's LED makers. In the three days to Dec. 11, 2013 they overbought more than three million shares in packager Unity Opto Technology Ltd.; and they own over a quarter of Ledlink, putting it behind only Epistar and Everlight in the ranking of foreign holdings of LED makers in Taiwan. (KL)