Taking OLED lamps as a stepping stone, OLED will soon have a huge impact on the industrial structure of the lighting industry. In the past, Japan's lighting market was less than 1 trillion yen (approximately 74.8 billion yuan) and has been monopolized by the top five lighting giants. The production of fluorescent lamps requires sophisticated glass processing and requires the investment of huge production equipment. Each production line exceeds 10 billion yen (approximately 748 million yuan). Under such circumstances, new players are almost impossible to compete. After the distributors have purchased the goods, they are also periodically sold. This is a traditional business model with long history.
OLED, as a semiconductor product, is completely different from the existing lighting market environment. Like DRAM (memory) and liquid crystal, which are also semiconductor products, they may face fierce competition in the rapidly falling prices and market share. Toshiba Kenji, director of the OLED product planning department of lighting technology OLED, said: In 2011, the competition will further intensify, and there will be room for price reduction of 10% to 20%. There may be manufacturers who withdraw from the price war early. Although, OLED product prices continue to decline at a rate of 20% per year. However, the industry generally believes that the price of OLED products will further decline. The reason for this is that in addition to lighting, the use of OLEDs is constantly expanding. Now, 80% to 90% of OLED products are used in mobile phone backlight products. In particular, with the upgrading of computers and cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), the output of OLED products will further increase. In addition, Sharp's LCD TV Aquos, which was launched in November 2009, has also adopted OLED backlight products.
In addition, after purchasing the OLED module, the lighting product can be produced by extremely simple installation of power supply and circuit. Therefore, investment in equipment production is several decades lower than that of fluorescent lamps. In addition, overseas companies such as South Korea and Taiwan are also constantly participating in market competition. Closed competition in the Japanese domestic market may suddenly evolve into international competition. At present, under the ferocity of new manufacturers, large-scale lighting manufacturers have not yet formulated a strategy for the era of OLED lighting. The sales executives of the lighting manufacturers all showed a sense of respect for OLED lighting when discussing OLED lighting. At the same time, they still hope to continue selling fluorescent lamps. From the time the existing production plans for incandescent lamps and low-efficiency fluorescent lamps to the production of high-efficiency fluorescent lamps have just been implemented, most manufacturers naturally want to continue to produce fluorescent lamps before recovering huge investment in production equipment. In the future, OLED lighting will become mainstream, but it is very confused about the speed of development. We actually want to do some adequate preparation.
OLED lamp as a knocking door impacts the lighting industry industry structure
The lighting industry has made great changes with the key to energy conservation. The market has continuously emerged with a number of products with energy-saving flags. Now OLED lamps have begun to participate in the lighting market competition. Frankly speaking, from the perspective of OLED lamps alone, it may be a loss. Although it cannot predict the time of profit, it cannot but introduce its own products. An executive from a large lighting company expressed sighs at the sharp drop in prices and rapid growth of OLED lamps.