LED industry will re-take the photovoltaic road

In the global economic downturn, many industries have experienced a crisis. The LED lighting industry, thanks to the introduction of national and local subsidy policies, is a prosperous appearance. In the lamps and lanterns city, the big supermarket sign is the LED lighting lamp everywhere, the power saving, the energy conservation is its main label. When a reporter surveys a supermarket, he can see that the introduction of some small lamps writes: “We only use electricity once a month!” This shows the degree of energy saving using LED lighting.

However, in March of this year, Shenzhen announced the repeal of the LED industry planning policy, and the outside world once interpreted it as avoiding the emergence of a second “photovoltaic”. According to industry analysts, since the beginning of this year, LED backlight and lighting market demand has been strong, and chip, package and application vendors have full orders. The LED outbreak will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, and it will usher in a boom of 7-8 years.

Enterprises are optimistic about the prospect of LED industry

Authoritative data predict that by 2020 the global lighting market will exceed US$150 billion, an increase of 11.9% from US$134 billion in 2010. Although the overall scale does not increase significantly, the lighting product structure will change significantly. Among them, the LED lighting market share will increase from about 5 billion US dollars in 2010 to 75 billion US dollars. That is to say, 15 times expansion in 10 years. In addition, according to data from the Taiwan Topology Industry Research Institute, the penetration rate of global LED lighting is currently only 10%. By 2015 or at the latest by 2020, the penetration rate will reach 50%.

It is reported that Qixi Holdings recently announced that the company plans to set up a joint venture with natural person Sun Debing to establish a subsidiary, "Guangzhou Qixi Optoelectronics Co., Ltd." to operate LED application products and expand the company's business scope. According to the announcement, Guangzhou Qixi Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. has a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Qixi Holdings stated that the main products of the newly-established subsidiaries do not involve LED core technology, and thus the company is facing fierce market competition and quick product replacement.

Australian Ocean Shunchang also announced recently that the company plans to raise RMB 100 million to RMB 100 million for a total investment of RMB 5.12 per share for investment in LED epitaxial wafers and chip industrialization projects (phase 1). According to the scheduled increase plan announced by the Australian Ocean Shunchang, the total investment of the LED epitaxial wafer and chip industrialization project (phase 1) is 808 million yuan, of which 400 million yuan is planned to be used for fund-raising. The remaining 100 million yuan will be added to supplement the liquidity of the parent company.

For the project's future prospects for the LED, Aoyang Shunchang stated that after the project is completed and put into production, it is expected that the annual sales income will reach 720 million yuan and the annual profit after tax will be 169 million yuan. The net profit of Australian Ocean Shunchang last year was only RMB 104 million. In other words, after the completion of the LED project (Phase I), the net profit of the company will increase by 1.63 times. This is undoubtedly a big plus for the future development of the Australian Ocean Shunchang.

Entrepreneurs from the LED front-line are equally optimistic and believe that “the industry is outbreak”. Mr. Gu Wei, Chairman of Mega International (002429, stocks), said, "The LED industry has huge room for growth and it is absolutely impossible to become the second photovoltaic." The reason is that LED belongs to consumer electronics, and the biggest feature of consumer electronics is that it is widely used and the market is extremely broad.

Brand advantage

In the process of replacing traditional lighting, LED lighting is bound to experience a period of sharp decline in prices. However, the decline in prices should be based on the maturity of the entire industry. People in the industry believe that at the expense of quality, there is no bottom-line shopping price, and the markets seized in this way are like the moon in the mirror and the flowers in the water. They cannot afford to beat.

Nowadays, the concept of mainstream consumer groups in the country has changed, and low prices have gradually become synonymous with low-quality products, and there is also a high degree of acceptance for the product premiums that brands bring. Too many domestic companies have experienced the pain of not having a brand, but the establishment of a brand is not an overnight success. Director of GSC Yan Shirong believes: “In the transformation of enterprises, especially the key points of brand upgrading and brand diversification, we need to combine modern science and more systematic modeling of brand image and brand awareness. The traditional marketing model of network marketing has greatly constrained the brand. The development of brand awareness and brand value is based on the reaction of human nature and brain nerves, and it captures the brains of target consumers through the integration of visual, auditory, taste, olfactory, and tactile five-sensory interaction experience models. The key is."

LED market space is large, entry threshold is low, brand manufacturers and cottage manufacturers have been fighting fierce. Some cottage products even have more price "advantages" than brand manufacturers. Insiders pointed out that the brand manufacturers with the advantages of production scale and product cost performance will win in the future. First of all, compared with the cottage manufacturers, large-scale enterprises have strong bargaining power in chip procurement; secondly, brand manufacturers are more competitive in terms of product design process and technological innovation. Although the cottage products are cheap, the main reason is the use of cheap chips and drive power, while the heat sink device also has to cut corners.

Guangzhou International Lighting Fair (Guangya Exhibition) has always been the arena of global lighting companies. In recent years, it has been promoted to be the world's largest exhibition of lighting & LED exhibitions, and it has become an international stage for LED lighting companies to open up markets and build brands. The 18th Guangya Exhibition will be held from June 9 to June 12 at the China Import and Export Fair Guangzhou Pazhou Complex. And many brand manufacturers will also debut exhibition. For example, Presett will display the independently developed LED single lamp (dimming) control system, street lamp and landscape lamp intelligent control system, and remote intelligent remote lighting controller for mobile phones and other products and solutions at this exhibition. The high-end brand light source family built by Mulinsen Co., Ltd. considers product structure and safety performance from the perspective of humanity, and then uses excellent materials to make it. It is highly efficient, energy-saving, soft light, zero noise, long life, etc. Common characteristics. All products comply with the RoHS management system, in line with the United States Energy Star energy standards.

Opportunity and crisis coexist

Although the LED industry is good, the industry can't get rid of the macroeconomic environment in the end. The economic downturn since the second half of 2011 has caused the relatively high-end LED lighting companies to feel chilled. In addition to the overcapacity caused by government subsidies, the profits of LED lighting products began to decline. It is understood that in the past two years, the price of LED lighting products has dropped by 30%.

According to the 2012 annual report issued by major LED listed companies recently, the entire LED industry chain is not in a good position. For example, in the LED chip and epitaxial wafer companies in the upstream of the industrial chain, the net profits of Huacan Optoelectronics, Silan Microelectronics, Qianzhao Optoelectronics and BDO Runda fell by 29.93%, 40.11%, 39.02% and 57.14%, respectively. The LED packaging company's rectangular lighting, Lehman Optoelectronics, Hongli Optoelectronics, and National Star's net profit fell by 27.45%, 31.59%, 35.27% and 67.36%, respectively.

It is understood that LED lighting overcapacity also has structural problems. The excess production capacity is mainly concentrated in the upstream chip companies because the previous Chinese LED chips mainly relied on imports and the production capacity gap was huge, causing a local investment boom. From scratch, 2010 The annual localization rate of LED chips reached 60%. The excess capacity of the upstream chip is transmitted to the end product, forming homogenous competition and low-level replication. In addition, because the LED lighting industry standards are not yet complete, standards, certification systems are not perfect; poor product interchangeability; poor product quality and reliability; detection indicators are not uniform, etc. are considered to be "multi-crimes" of LED lighting products.

At the same time, LED is also facing intellectual property crisis. In the past 10 years, the semiconductor lighting market has grown rapidly. LED intellectual property has become the focus of competition in the international semiconductor lighting industry. Looking at the pattern of global LED intellectual property rights, the industry's core patents are still dominated by Japan's Nichia Chemical Corporation, Toyota Synthetic Corporation, Cree Inc., Philips Lumens, and OSRAM of Germany. Although the number of LED patent applications in mainland China has increased significantly in recent years, China’s position in the global LED intellectual property structure has not been fundamentally improved.

China's LED patents are mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the field, and the patents for midstream packaging and downstream applications account for 64% of the total applications. In the key technological links that concern the long-term development of the industry, there is still a lack of core patents. Judging from the types of patents, China’s LED patents are dominated by utility models and design patents. Inventive patents account for a relatively low proportion, of which domestic LED practical patents account for 59%, design patents account for 15%, and LED inventions. The patent accounted for only 26%.

Today, intellectual property has become a strategic weapon for LED companies to compete. LED companies entering the market first use intellectual property as a strategic weapon to ensure "first-mover advantage." In the LED industry, the first-entered companies actively deploy patented networks to ensure first-mover advantage, and block late-coming companies from entering the LED market.