New Report now available on ASDReports Projects Smart Lighting Chips Markets to Reach Over $1.0 Billion by 2019

Thursday 30 October 2014, Amsterdam

he market for LED drivers, MCUs, sensors and other chips used in smart lighting will grow from around $67 million in 2014 to $1.05 billion in 2019.  This is according to a new report now available on ASDReports. Based on the broad acceptance of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), of which smart lighting is a part, the report has considerably upgraded its long-term forecasts for smart lighting compared with a previous report we issued in 2013.

About the report:

The report, “The Markets for Smart Lighting Drivers, Controllers and Sensor Chips – 2014,” provides insight into the market opportunities available to the semiconductor industry as the result of the current boom in smart lighting, which itself is part of the transition to an IoT.    Smart lighting provides users high levels of energy efficiency, color tuning (mood enhancement) capabilities and/or visible light communications.

The report contains detailed eight-year market projections of seven major smart lighting chip types in both revenue and volume terms.  Additional breakouts are provided by (1) the part of the lighting system in which the chips are used and (2) the technology generation of the system itself and (3) the type of building, vehicle or location in which the smart lighting systems will be used.

Firms mentioned in the report include:  Acuity Brands, ARM, Atmel, Broadcom, California Eastern Labs, Casio, Cavet, Cypress Semiconductor, Daintree Networks, Digi, Dresden elektronik, Eastfield, Easylite, Echoflex, Energy Automation Systems, EnOcean, Fifth Light, FlexiPanel, Freescale, Leviton, IBSEN, Infineon, Intel, Leedarson, Libellium, Lumenergi, Lumetric, Lutron, Luxim, Marvell, Masco, Microchip Technology, MK Electric, MMB Research, Nivis, NXP, OLEDCOMM, Omnio, Osram, Panasonic, Philips, Radiocrafts, Radios Inc., Renesas, RF Monolithics, Schneider Electric, Sena, Sharp, Siemens, Silicon Labs, STMicroelectronics, Supreme Architecture, Sylvania, Telegesis, Texas Instruments, Universal Lighting, and Zonoff.

From the report:

The LED lighting market is expected to expand rapidly and much of the next-generation of LED lighting being deployed will be “smart.”  We are seeing a growing interest in smart lighting by the chipmakers as part of their refocusing on Internet-of-Things opportunities. New types of intelligent LED drivers with embedded sensors and MCUs are expected to emerge as a result.  Sales of LED drivers for smart lighting systems are expected to reach $525 million by 2019.

Despite such growth, LED driver chips for energy efficient lighting will commoditize quickly.  It will become increasingly hard to make the case for smart lighting on just efficiency grounds anymore.  As a result, the report believes that chipmakers will then turn their attention to color-tunable lighting for improved mood, health and job performance.  Here there is still considerable opportunity to designing innovative chips enabling cool-to-warm adjustment and the ability to cycle through a range of colors.   Chips consumed by color tuning smart lighting systems will reach almost $260 million by 2019. Future light tuning chips for lighting systems will also be built around a new generation of LED microarrays.

Standards development for smart lighting-related wireless networking has accelerated in the past year.  Important new developments in this area include the evolution of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to control lighting using QR codes and the emergence of a Google protocol for smart lighting networking that incorporates IPv6.  Meanwhile, ZigBee light bulbs getting cheaper thanks to recent “smart lamp” introductions from GE and possibly others.  By 2019, the revenues generated by smart lighting sensors are expected to exceed $220 million.