According to LEDinside analyst Terri Wang, the major suppliers in China have successively lowered their prices of LED chips in the past few months, but the prices of LED package products have not been immediately lowered due to the long purchase cycle. Although some authorized agents of LED package products have lowered the prices for certain orders, the average price in market has not seen obvious fluctuations in December 2017.
As the prices remain stable, suppliers keep upgrading the product performances, and put development focus on segments with higher growth rate such as industrial lighting and outdoor lighting. For example, Cree has launched the new extreme density high-power LED, which delivers a lumen density of more than 284 lm/mm2.
In addition, Chinese manufacturers have expanded their business to the automotive lighting market through investment and acquisition. For instance, CEC-Kaistar has obtained patents of chip and phosphor by acquisition of Bridgelux and Intematix. Kaistar also invested in automotive lighting modules and thus completed the vertical integration from LED wafer to automotive lighting modules, entering the automotive OE market.
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