Trendsetters rewriting the history of lighting: smart lighting leads the future

Data from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the penetration rate of LED lighting in the U.S. market in 2013 was still less than 5%. Assuming that the penetration rate doubles every year, replacement demand will last for 3 to 4 years. As for the life of LED lighting, we believe that in the period of rapid development of LED lighting, long life is not the most important factor for manufacturers. Instead, they should try to reduce costs as much as possible while meeting life standards (20,000 to 30,000 hours). Moreover, when the industry matures, manufacturers will strive to maximize product life at all costs. According to market research, we learned that the cost of an LED driving power supply with intelligent control function generally does not exceed 10 yuan, but the factory price of lighting fixtures equipped with this type of power supply is 20% to 30% higher than that of ordinary lighting fixtures. This intelligent configuration alone can add at least 20% to the premium of ordinary lighting products (and this is without considering additional more complex systems and higher-end configurations).

We refer to the statistics and forecasts of the LED general lighting market size from 2009 to 2015, and conservatively assume that the premium of smart lighting products is 20%. The new market space brought by smart lighting to the industry in 2014 and 2015 will be approximately 26 billion yuan and 36 billion yuan respectively. According to this calculation, without considering high value-added products, the smart lighting industry will provide an additional market space of at least 60 billion yuan in 2014 to 2015 alone. If calculated based on a compound annual growth rate of 30%, it is conservatively estimated that this value will reach nearly 80 billion yuan by 2018, and the cumulative amount within 5 years will exceed 200 billion yuan.

Comment: Judging from recent market trends, smart lighting has become a new product that manufacturers such as Philips are competing to promote. At the Frankfurt exhibition at the beginning of the year and the Guangzhou Lighting Exhibition that just ended, smart lighting was also a hotly discussed topic. We believe that the market is currently in its infancy, and manufacturers will increase their promotion efforts. The market is expected to enter a period of rapid development in the next 1 to 2 years. It is foreseeable that the lighting industry ecology will undergo major changes. Smart lighting belongs to the category of smart home, and its development requires the cooperation of the entire industry chain, which will lead to major changes in the industry ecology in the future. We believe that industrial integration based on specialized production will be the development direction of smart lighting in the future. Specialized production is the basis for the survival of lighting manufacturers and controller manufacturers, and system integrators and platform operators have a greater say in the industry. At the same time, it is a high probability that lighting manufacturers and Internet companies will increase cooperation.