LED industry status quo: "happy" in the "pain" to move forward

With the further increase of the global LED market demand, the future development of China's LED industry is facing great opportunities, but there are also unprecedented challenges. At present, LED core technology and patents are basically monopolized by foreign countries. It can be said that China's LED industry is in the "happy" in the "painful" forward.

LED industry from an international perspective

At present, the world has formed a preliminary industrial pattern in Asia, North America, Europe's three largest regional center for the synthesis of Nichia chemical, Japan's TOYOTA, the United States, Corey Prichard and Germany's OSRAM patented core technology competition, few international manufacturers from Japan and the United States and Europe today on behalf of LED upstream the level 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 several major manufacturers. China's LED is still in the lower level, about 80% of the products are concentrated in landscape lighting, traffic lights and other applications market, the general lighting market is still being promoted.

With the rapid development of the domestic LED market, more and more foreign enterprises turn their attention to china. In recent years, the number of patent applications filed in the field of LED has increased significantly year by year. According to the State Intellectual Property Office Development Research Center in the "semiconductor lighting patent risk analysis report" that the global 22 countries and regions have applied for a patent in China, the top five countries are Japan, South Korea, the United States, Germany and Holland. Among them, the number of patent applications in Japan is far ahead of 1306, accounting for about 24% of the total application. In terms of effective patents, the proportion of domestic patent applications and foreign patent applications in China is about 4:5. But in these domestic patent applications, the Taiwan region occupies a large share of its effective invention patents accounted for 53%. From the point of view of the distribution of the industrial chain, the company mainly foreign patent more chips, packaging field, half of the LED core invention in China filed a patent application, LED foreign enterprises to master the most core patented technology.

Twists and turns in the domestic LED industry

Domestic LED industry started in 1970s. After nearly 40 years of development, has now formed a base of 7 national semiconductor lighting project in Shanghai, Dalian, Nanchang, industry of Xiamen, Shenzhen, Yangzhou and Shijiazhuang, the products are widely used in the field of general lighting and landscape lighting. At present, China has become the world's largest producer of lighting appliances and the second largest exporter of lighting appliances. As of the end of 2011, our company has more than 3000 LED enterprises, of which the annual output value of only $140. However, in these 140 companies, no one company's annual sales of more than 1 billion yuan, more than $500 million is only a few.

What is the reason Chinese LED industry development in the difficult? The reason is a lack of authoritative industry technical standards; two is the enterprise development mainly concentrated in the downstream application fields, relatively less in the upper and middle reaches of the R & D investment. However, some foreign companies and some enterprises in Taiwan region of China have monopolized most of the core technologies of LED, and the mainland enterprises can only turn their attention to the lower technology application market.

In addition to the core technology competitiveness of China's LED industry is not strong, the combination of scientific research is also a major factor restricting its development. The LED patent is a large part in scientific research institutes, the extension of patent ownership, the top three were Semiconductor Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of physics, Beijing University of Technology; chip in the field, were ranked the top three semiconductor Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, Beijing University of Technology. Compared with the scientific research institutions, domestic enterprises to apply for more patents.

Compared with foreign companies, China's LED patent application is obviously at a disadvantage. According to the Institute of LED Industrial Research Institute, China's LED patent applications for a total of 26 thousand and 71, which is located in the middle reaches of the industry and downstream packaging and Application Patents close to 50%. Although our country has certain advantages in electrode, micro structure, reflective layer, substrate stripping, bonding and so on, but most of them are peripheral patents, invention patents accounted for only 60%, and through the "Patent Cooperation Treaty" (PCT) international patent application submitted by the way to foreign patent applications and no more.

In the face of international competitors' eye, domestic enterprises should practice hard". The first is to increase the intensity of independent innovation, focusing on the development of new technologies can be widely accepted and recognized by the market; followed by cooperation with foreign companies. We should absorb foreign advanced technologies in digestion, strengthen, imitation and innovation, by improving the core patents to competitors, improve the technical effect is improved patent application; again, this is an effective way to avoid the risk of patent infringement.

Strengthening the cooperation of industry, University and research is one of the effective ways to promote the rapid development of LED industry in china. Some domestic research institutions have a certain R & D capability, while some enterprises have a strong processing capacity. Between enterprises, enterprises and scientific research institutions should strengthen the sense of cooperation, and promote the innovation of scientific research institutions to transfer to enterprises, and strive to cultivate a number of independent intellectual property rights of innovation oriented enterprises.

In short, China's LED enterprises must attach importance to the accumulation of intellectual property rights in the study, arming themselves with science and technology, the use of patents to develop domestic and international market, a "trap" into a good market prospects, so as to fly higher and farther.