Steady growth in the LED lighting market supported the capacity expansion efforts of LED chip and package industries in 2016, says LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. Furthermore, the annual revenue of China’s LED package market grew by 6% for 2016 to reach US$8.9 billion, according to LEDinside. In terms of ranking by revenue market share, Nichia retained its first place position in the Chinese market for 2016, while MLS climbed to second place and Lumileds dropped to third place.
The combined revenue of the top 10 package suppliers in China for 2016 was US$4.1 billion, up by 24% compared with their 2015 figure. By contrast, the average annual growth rate of the global LED package market came to just 6% in 2016. “The ranking indicates an increasing degree of concentration in China’s package industry,” said LEDinside analyst Allen Yu. “Also, domestic suppliers captured more of their home market and thus moved up in the ranking.”
Major domestic suppliers MLS, NationStar and Honglitronic will be raising their production capacity this year. Once the additional capacity from them becomes available, China’s LED package industry will have a more noticeably stronger position in the global market.
Nichia was still the revenue leader in China for 2016 because of its advantages in manufacturing technology, patents and brand name. Besides maintaining a large market share in the backlight market, Nichia has also been very active in the high-class automotive lighting market.
China’s MLS became the second largest package supplier in the domestic market in terms of revenue by extending its market shares for lighting LEDs and display LEDs. MLS also kept raising its production capacity through the entire 2016.
Lumileds slipped down to third spot in the Chinese market ranking for 2016. However, the company maintained annual revenue growth and remained ahead of other suppliers in applications such as high-end commercial lighting, automotive lighting and mobile flash LEDs.
Likewise, Taiwan-based Everlight and Lite-on posted revenue growth in the Chinese market. Everlight saw contributions from a wide range of application demands last year, including TV backlighting, mobile flash LEDs, display LEDs, automotive lighting and infrared (IR) products. Lite-on’s revenue was also driven by mobile flash LEDs, automotive lighting and IR products.
Among the top 10 suppliers in China for 2016, Honglitronic and NationStar were two domestic companies that advanced in the ranking as well. NationStar registered a large annual increase of 36% in its revenue from the domestic market last year. This allowed the company to climb to sixth place in the ranking. NationStar has established itself as the market leader for fine-pitch LED displays and is aggressively expanding into the lighting LED market at the same time.
Honglitronic too is growing its market share for lighting LEDs. Smalite, which is Honglitronic’s subsidiary package maker, saw its revenue shot up by more than 60% annually in 2016. Honglitronic could go up further in the Chinese market ranking for this year as its production site in China’s Jiangxi Province takes on additional production capacity.
