General lighting has been a relatively slowly changing industry, and in many ways still relies on light sources nearly
indistinguishable from the Edison vacuum tube "bulb" of the late 1800s. In contrast, semiconductor-based high
brightness LEDs (HB LEDs) are a "Moore's Law"-type technology, with a 35 year history of exponentially decreasing
costs and improving performance. This trend is accelerating, with no sign of slowing down for at least a decade.
As our industry's own Moore's Law continues its inevitable march past Thomas Edison, increasing numbers of
applications and ever larger markets open up to this technology. This revolution will change the entire
paradigm of the lighting industry, including the current $17 billion bulb market and the $61 billion light fixture
market.
HB LEDs are the essential building blocks of this emerging Solid State Lighting Industry.
They are being adopted in illumination applications due to their low power consumption, long lifetimes,
high reliability, fast switching, small footprint, high light density, and full spectrum color properties.
HB LEDs are penetrating the general lighting market in various niche applications, including retail, architectural,
and decorative lighting. Large screen LCD TVs and automobile forward lights utilizing HB LEDs are on the market.
High-end cell phones use them as camera flashes. Industry analysts predict that solid state HB LED-based lighting
will achieve significant penetration in general illumination over the next 5 to 10 years, much in the same way that
solid state transistors and integrated circuits replaced vacuum tubes in the 1960s and '70s.
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