Delta Electronics Inc (台達電), the nation’s biggest supplier of power supply units, expects its new LED lighting business to become profitable this year, benefiting from growing use of LED lighting products.
The company is also shifting its focus to developing total LED lighting solutions from just making LED bulbs amid constant price decreases, Delta Electronics chairman Yancey Hai (海英俊) told reporters on the sidelines of the annual LED lighting show in Taipei.
“LED lighting is the trend as prices continue to fall,” Hai said. “There are too many [LED bulb] suppliers. We are differentiating our products by providing total solutions.”
Photo: Lo Chien-yi, Taipei Times
A TrendForce Corp report says global prices of LED bulbs equivalent a 40 watt fluorescent bulb have declined 21 percent in a year to US$15.3 per unit last month.
“Last year, our LED lighting business was still in the red. This year, it will start to eke out a profit,” Hai said.
In November last year, Delta clinched a major smart lighting control deal worth 2.7 million yuan (US$433,555) in China by providing a system for street lamps in Guangdong Province.
The company also makes LED bulbs for customers in Japan and Europe, and sells its own-branded LED bulbs.
The global lighting market is expected to grow to 9 million euros (US$12.5 million) in 2020, with 57 percent of the market LED lighting and smart lighting control systems, said the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, one of co-organizers of the annual Taiwan International LED Lighting Show, citing a forecast by Philips Lighting.
LED chipmaker Epistar Corp (晶電) chairman Lee Biing-jye (李秉傑) said yesterday he is optimistic about the LED industry this year, on the back of rising LED lighting penetration and growing demand for new ultra-high-definition 4K2K LED TVs.
In Japan, the penetration rate of LED lighting is expected to rise to 70 percent this year from last year’s 50 percent, Lee said.
In the US, the world’s biggest LED lighting market, the penetration is set to increase to 20 percent this year from 10 percent last year, he said.
Global LED lighting penetration will rise to 50 percent in 2017, he added.
Epistar posted a net profit of NT$74.55 million (US$2.44 million) last year, recovering from a net loss of NT$1.12 billion in 2012, and the company’s board decided to pay a cash dividend of NT$0.45 per share, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
Revenue grew 11.6 percent to NT$22.24 billion from NT$19.93 billion in 2012.
Lee said LED lighting revenue would account for 35 percent of the company’s overall revenue this year, without elaborating.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day