On September 10, Panasonic released LED light bulbs. Hitachi lighting recently released LED bulbs that support dimmers. So far, five major lighting manufacturers, including Toshiba Lighting & technology, neclighting and Mitsubishi Electric OSRAM, have all launched LED bulbs. The prices of the products from different manufacturers are not much different: about 4000 yen does not support dimmers, and about 5000 yen supports dimmers. About half the price this spring. Sharp, which just set foot in LED lighting business last year, was the initiator of low price. Toshiba lighting technology followed suit, launching products at the same price. The other four companies also released new products one by one between August and September. Perhaps because of this, the frequency of "LED lighting" and "led bulb" on newspapers and networks is getting higher and higher.

LED bulb will be an assembly industry

We have also heard the sound of "whether the current LED lighting is a little overheated", but with the advent of LED as a new light source, the lighting appliance and lighting industry is undoubtedly ushering in a turning point. The special "LED lighting Warring States era" of Nikkei electronics on September 21, 2009 introduces the development of lighting industry in the transformation period.

This change is slightly different from when the main lighting changes from incandescent bulb to fluorescent lamp. The previous lighting consists of light source such as bulb, fluorescent lamp and apparatus (lamps) for installing light source. This is true of incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lamps. Therefore, manufacturers have a certain degree of division of labor. But LEDs are shaking that foundation. Sharp's dimming LED bulb is a good example (although the time to market is delayed). Although it has the shape of a light bulb, its function is to light fixtures. Because we get rid of the structural constraints of light bulbs and lamps, we can achieve more free commodity design.

Moreover, the bulb manufacturing which originally belongs to the equipment industry is also gradually changing to the "assembly industry" which purchases LED packaging and power supply. Examples of its products include LED bulbs from neclighting and irisohyama. At first glance, the two products are exactly the same. At first, I also thought that this was the OEM supply provided by neclighting to Alice Oyama. As soon as I asked, I knew that these two products were designed independently. Only because the external heat sink uses the standard products (may be customized to a certain extent), the appearance is similar.

With the bulk of components, it's not polite to say that even without the knowledge of electrical design and thermal design, LED bulbs can be manufactured, which may be difficult to form large performance differences. Just as the personal computer has developed into an assembly industry with horizontal division of labor, it is difficult to win by handling performance differences. If the performance of the basic component LED package is improved, the situation will be more serious. Because the power consumption, brightness, color performance and other basic performance largely depends on the packaging performance. If so, the battle for LED bulbs is bound to turn into a simple price war.

With the bulk of components, it's not polite to say that even without the knowledge of electrical design and thermal design, LED bulbs can be manufactured, which may be difficult to form large performance differences. Just as the personal computer has developed into an assembly industry with horizontal division of labor, it is difficult to win by handling performance differences. If the performance of the basic component LED package is improved, the situation will be more serious. Because the power consumption, brightness, color performance and other basic performance largely depends on the packaging performance. If so, the battle for LED bulbs is bound to turn into a simple price war.