VantagePoint Capital Partners, the Silicon Valley investor that helped bring Tesla Motors Inc public, expects prices for LEDs to “plummet” within three years as competition intensifies to satisfy surging demand for energy-efficient lights.
Prices for LEDs may fall 90 percent by 2015, Alan Salzman, chief executive officer of the San Bruno, California-based venture capital company, said in an interview.
Incandescent bulbs are being phased out in Europe. In the US, efficiency policies will eliminate the 100-watt bulb next year. LED makers stand to gain a bigger share of the US$40 billion a year global lighting market. Bulb companies including General Electric Co and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV are producing LEDs, and Salzman said start-ups that are developing low-cost LEDs will take a slice of the market.
“We’re just at the beginning of the LED phase,” Salzman said. “There’s very little quality product yet even on the shelves.”
VantagePoint has invested about US$750 million in 32 clean technology companies. Those include four that make LED products: Switch Bulb Co, Bridgelux Inc, Huga Optotech Inc and Glo AB.
Salzman said that within five years the use of LEDs for general lighting purposes could grow to more than 50 percent of the market from less than 1 percent today, adding that the commercial market that could take more time to develop.
“All consumer stuff will go,” Salzman said. “Commercial, where you have the fluorescent tubes — that will take a little longer. I think it’s going to be one of the fastest clean-tech sectors to flip.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last