China's LED industry urgent need to expand the core technology industry chain

After the as LED lighting industry spring flood development, the emergence of investment overheating controversy, and even insiders believe that, in the domestic market has not really started, wild development will overdraft future production capacity and market.

Driven by the concept of energy conservation and emission reduction and low carbon economy, LED has become a hot industry, attracting investors keen sense of smell hot. Goldman Sachs, a study pointed out that the global LED market size from 2008 to 2010, the compound annual growth rate is expected to be 18%.

LED industry blowout chain missing

As a new generation of global environmental protection light source, LED with its high brightness, low heat, long life and other advantages, is known as the most development of green lighting in twenty-first Century. At present, China has been included in the semiconductor LED lighting technology development plan in the medium and long term, and now has formed epitaxial wafer production, chip preparation, packaging integration, LED application industry chain.

Driven by favorable policies, the rapid development of the domestic LED industry to blowout. According to statistics, in 2009, China's LED lighting industry, the upstream enterprises have nearly 60, the middle reaches of the device packaging enterprises have more than 1 thousand, the downstream enterprises have more than more than 2 thousand, employing more than 800 thousand people. 2009 semiconductor lighting industry output value of 82 billion 700 million yuan.

LED Research Institute of Industrial Research Institute, now, LED lighting has been beyond the backlight market growth rate of the fastest growing application market LED. By 2015, LED penetration rate in the domestic lighting market penetration will reach 1/4.

At the same time, many investment institutions also optimistic about the prospects for the LED industry. "Just as digital products replace film, LED lights will be able to replace the traditional incandescent lamp with unimaginable speed. Beijing Shen An Investment Group Chairman Zhuang Shenan said, in the market, many companies want to attract a place. At present, many pharmaceutical factories in the south, wineries are doing LED lighting. "

As of the end of 2009, there are more than 3000 LED enterprises, of which, the annual output value of only $140. However, in these 140 companies, there is no one company's annual sales of more than 1 billion yuan, more than $500 million is only a few, mostly in the range of 100 million -2 billion. Visible, although the number of LED companies in China, but the scale is generally small.

In addition to the smaller, the current domestic LED industry chain is not complete, the key links are often missing, in the face of patent issues Germany, Japan and the United States, the domestic LED companies had to take a detour, another way.

At present, the research and development of the domestic photoelectric enterprises are mainly concentrated in the downstream application fields. This is mainly because of the large foreign companies and some enterprises in Taiwan, China has monopolized most of the core technology of LED, domestic enterprises can only turn their attention to the lower content of the downstream application market.

Lack of core technology, although the market is expected to be so high, but at this stage, due to the blind development of China's LED lighting industry exposed the lack of core technology, lack of innovation, market competition disorder and other issues. One side is the rapid development of the LED industry, while the technology and equipment is stretched. This is the current development of China's LED industry.

An industry analyst said, "the five major international manufacturers from Japan and the United States and Europe represents the highest level of LED, has a significant impact on the development of industry. This effect is not only reflected in the product and income, more important is the monopoly of technology, more than 50% of the core patents are in the hands of these five manufacturers".

At present, the LED epitaxial wafer production technology mainly uses the organic metal chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) method, and the MOCVD equipment is mainly monopolized by AIXTRON and VEECO in the United States of America, which is the two oligarchs. Data show that the total market share of the two companies over 92%. Moreover, the United States and Europe have mastered the core technology of the upstream epitaxial wafer and chip manufacturing sectors, from the United States, Japan and Europe, the company has a LED industrial chain upstream region of the original invention patents 85%-90%.

Related survey shows that the package is the main research and application field of our country, the number of patent applications accounted for 39% of the total, while the extension and chip in the upstream industry, research and production in China started late, the lower proportion of patent.

Vice president of Nanchang University, said: "on the overall level, China and the international first-class level is still about two years gap. "

Strengthen R & D patents

Under the pressure of market competition, LED industry to break the bottleneck of development, grasp the right to speak in the market, it must have strong technical advantage, and has its own independent intellectual property rights and core technology, can have development potential. At the same time to focus on the development of new products, funds permitting, to establish and perfect the system of patent application and quality, seize all can seize market opportunities, adjust the market and product positioning of the company, highlight their own advantages, establish strategic alliances with other upstream and downstream enterprises to develop and expand the market.

TCL group Limited by Share Ltd Intellectual Property Center Development and patent licensing minister Wang Huajun said: "foreign companies face" ", the domestic enterprises should look at fiercely as a tiger does hard" internal strength ", increase innovation, focus on research and development can be widely accepted and recognized the new technology market, and on this basis, expand the license, in cooperation with foreign company. "

Research and Development Center for the State Intellectual Property Office