The LED industry chain consists of six levels: Die (L0), Package (L1), Carrier (L2), Module (L3), Lump (L4) and System (L5). Herein, Die (L0) and Package ( L1) are two focuses.
After the recession in 2011 and 2012, LED saw a turning point in 2013 when Die (L0) and Package (L1) LED market size hit about USD15.188 billion, a rise of 8.3% from 2012. In 2014, the LED market will continue to recover with the market size of USD16.562 billion (up 9.0% from 2013). However, the market is expected to slow down in 2015 because oversupply and a new round of price wars may arise.
The global LED industry can be divided into four clusters. First, Europe and America underline general lighting with an emphasis on high reliability and high brightness. Second, Japan embodies the most comprehensive technology, performing outstandingly in both of general lighting and backlight display. Besides, it also targets general lighting, automobiles, mobile phones and TV. Third, South Korea and Taiwan targets laptop display backlight, LED-TV backlight and mobile phone backlight with large shipment, low unit price and low margin. Last, Mainland China centers AlInGaP, outdoor display, advertising screen and signal lights which require low technology and reliability; and in these fields, customers are scattered and the unit price is low.
From 2011 onwards, a large number of Mainland Chinese enterprises have entered the LED industry, causing panic. In reality, none of Mainland Chinese enterprises (including the giant Sanan Optoelectronics) is capable of producing white LED chips or grasping the related patents. Therefore, Mainland China has to import or purchase all needed white LED chips from foreign companies.
Mainland Chinese LED enterprises rely on local governmental subsidies which were huge in 2010-2013. For example, Elec-Tech International was subsidized with RMB270 million in 2010, RMB311 million in 2011, RMB224 million in 2012 and RMB315 million in 2013; but, the net income of the company was only RMB4.6 million in 2013. Without these subsidies, the company might be in a serious loss. Sanan Optoelectronics obtains RMB4 billion from Xiamen's government in 2014, because Xiamen is eager to make the company return to Xiamen from Wuhu.
Numerous Mainland Chinese LED downstream enterprises are featured with small scale, severe homogenization and intense price war. They cannot get governmental subsidies or conduct financing in the stock market. In 2014, many of them may go bankrupt.
Since 2013, the development of the LED industry has been mainly reflected in the packaging field. In the future, the LED cost reduction depends on packaging instead of Epitaxy. Packaging costs over 50% of the LED chip spending. Currently, COB packaging and Flip chip packaging are not only the most promising, but also represent the future direction.
COB performs strikingly in the field of street lighting and high-power general lighting. But, it is inferior to FLIP-CHIP in the fields where volume is emphasized, such as TV BLU. In addition, FLIP-CHIP's cost advantage is more obvious. From the perspective of cost and application, COB will become the future mainstream of lighting design.
FLIP-CHIP made its debut in 2008, and became mature in early 2012. Its biggest advantage lies in: it can go to SMT production lines directly under high current without Wirebond or separate welding; besides, its size is small. The market size is estimated to jump from USD1.5 billion in 2013 to USD5.5 billion in 2017. In the BLU field, FLIP-CHIP will become the mainstream.
Prior to 2014, LED cost cutting concentrated in the Epitaxy field, so that Epitaxy vendors witnessed a sharp decline in profits, even many of them exited from the industry due to losses. After 2014, packaging factories will suffer the cost-cutting pressure, so some of them with poor technical capabilities may see descending profits.