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Editorial: Alan Thompson Reports on BLUE 2005
... Our Sr. Technology Editor and longtime industry veteran, Dr. Alan Thompson, not only helped organize BLUE 2005, he was there in Taiwan all week gathering the news and filed the following report. I want to publicly thank Alan, Bob Walker and his staff at YEBY Associates, and my partner,...
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May 22, 2005...Reports are beginning to come in to our editorial offices as people return
to their desks after an exciting week in Taiwan attending the 3rd Annual BLUE
2005 event, which Compound Semi Online Inc. proudly organized. Thanks to
our sponsors, led by Aixtron, Veeco and Accent, we were able to provide an excellent
venue for the true shakers and movers within the solid state lighting industry.
Our Senior Technology Editor, Dr. Alan Thompson again worked closely with our
co-chair, Dr. Robert Walker of YEBY Associates to put together an exceptional
program. Alan Thompson's report appears to your viewing left in our editorial
slot. Bob Walker sent in a quick and thoughtful note with the following highlights
which we deem of critical importance and therefore headline news today for readers
of LIGHTimes and CompoundSemi News.
According to Bob Walker's observations, the emphasis on IP issues (intellectual
property) shows that IP is of increasing importance in Taiwan, and virtually
everywhere, despite stereotypes to the contrary. BLUE 2005 was the first event
ever to raise the IP issue openly in a conference setting, playing off Chuck
Swoboda’s "Walmart may have a problem!" mantra in his
keynote address last year at BLUE 2004. (Chuck Swoboda is the President and
CEO of Cree Inc., and soon to also assume the role of Chairman.) "IP
issues must be faced openly by our industry to move forward – both in terms
of allowing competition (and not fear used to limit competition) while still
respectively the value and innovation of new IP that we must continuously create
to move forward," encouraged Bob Walker at the conclusion of this year's
meet. Bob is a highly respected international consultant to the SSL industry
and has worked tirelessly to help level the international market playing field.
Bob also noted that one of our key speakers on IP issues was Jed Dorsheimer
of Adams Harkness & Hill, who predicted that “2005 May be the Year
of the Phosphor”. Bob Walker explained that the quote relates to the
fact that phosphor IP may indeed be the next big IP battleground. "With
Osram having licensed players in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, and Intematix out
with a business model focused on licensing new, superior phosphors to key players
in Asia, this could turn into something very exciting." Bob also made
special note of Wu Ling’s visit to Taiwan from Beijing. "This heralds
an increasing level of business cooperation among the various regions (not countries)
despite remaining political issues. This was Wu Ling's first trip to Taiwan,
and BLUE brought her." Bob also thought a highlight was Epistar’s
“announcement” of the LCD BLU. "Even though Epistar is a chip
company, showed increasing innovation in the region, and the design to be innovative
and create markets." He also noted that included in the buzz around
BLUE was TIR's new Lexel light source technology, regarded by some as multiple truly massive breakthroughs
in Solid State Lighting, well deserving of emphasis. It's slated to be developed into product lines by TIR and its partners in the near future. Stay tuned to more about
what went down at BLUE 2005.
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Robert Steele Warns SSL Industry to Look to New Applications
Scott McMahan, News EditorMay 20, 2005...At BLUE 2005 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Dr. Robert (Bob) Steele of Strategies Unlimited of Mountain View, California USA, predicted an SSL industry growth slowdown over the next several years. While the industry has seen tremendous growth, it was largely due to the mobile appliance market. Bob Steele predicts that the market growth will slow significantly over the next several years as the mobile appliance market saturates. He pointed out that the end of 2004 and Q1 of 2005 already showed slowing of growth among some of the major suppliers.
According to Dr. Steele, about 45% of the HB-LED chips came from China, Taiwan, and Korea in 2004. About 25% came from North America (the vast majority of North American produced LED chips came from the United States), another 22% came from Japan, and 8% of HB-LED chips came from Europe. Dr. Steele said that the largest growth in the production of HB-LED chips came from Asia. He warned that to sustain future growth, the industry must look for new applications such as auto headlamps and LCD backlighting.
Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... Cree Again Leverages White LED Patent 175 From ATMI
LIGHTimes StaffMay 19, 2005...Cree Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA, has licensed its white LED patent 175 to Stanley Electric, Rohm, and Cotco.
The licenses provide rights to manufacture and sell white LEDs that incorporate
Cree’s high performance LED chips. The company is in discussions
with other potential partners to license this patent. Cree hopes to announce
further licensing arrangements over the next several quarters. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... Osram Breaks 200 Lumen Barrior with Single White LED
LIGHTimes StaffMay 19, 2005...Osram Opto of Germany (and San Jose, California USA) has broken the 200 lumen barrier with a single white LED component
called Ostar. Ostar boasts a drive current of a mere 700 mA, a 3X1cm size, and
a 50,000 hour lifetime rating.
Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... George Mueller Outlines Industry Challenges in BLUE 2005 Keynote Address
Scott McMahan, News EditorMay 18, 2005...George Mueller, Founding Chairman and CEO of Color Kinetics of Boston, Massachusetts USA outlined some of
the challenges the solid-state lighting industry must address before it can displace
incumbent lighting during his keynote address at BLUE 2005 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
According to Mr. Mueller, the main engineering issues that must be overcome include:
performance, color temperature, consistency, CRI, longevity, quality, and competitive
price. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... MIT Releases Microphotonics Industry Consortium 2005 Roadmap
CompoundSemi News StaffMay 18, 2005...The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) came out with the
Microphotonics Industry Consortium 2005 Communication Technology Roadmap.
According to the report the number of suppliers vying for a share of the communications-centered
photonics TAM forces one of two behaviors: an outsourced manufacturing model,
or large-scale consolidation of the supply base. The entire photonics industry
has a large and growing total addressable market (TAM), but the broad range of
applications has fragmented the market.
In part the report discusses the integration of III-V materials in microphotonics
and optoelectronics. It states that much of current integration in III-V material
systems has been driven by the requirements of optical telecommunications networks.
The report lists common attributes of III-V materials that result in superior
performance including: carrier effects, tunable band gap, high index contrast
waveguides, reasonably inexpensive thin layers, and high transparency beyond
the band edge with low carrier levels. The report explains, “While
silicon has been the material of choice for integration of electronic functions,
we expect III-V technologies to remain the best approach for optical devices
due to the ability to generate light efficiently and to provide a full range
of other required photonic functions.” The report further points
out that parallel or serial integration of III-V materials is intended to improve
operating costs, manufacturing costs, and ease of use with a “turn-key”
solution at the system level.
In the long-term, the report projects that customization will be replaced by
standardization. The required breadth of capability and resources does not currently
exist in one place. The report predicts that planar integration will drive cost
reduction, and electronic-photonic convergence will drive new functionality.
This can only be achieved with circuit simulation and wafer-level test platforms.
The report calls for a standard component platform and manufacturing infrastructure
as well as industry-wide R&D to reduce the product development cycle time. Dowa Mining to Mass Produce GaN on Sapphire Epiwafers by 2007
LIGHTimes StaffMay 16, 2005...Dowa Mining Company of Tokyo, Japan, a supplier of various metals, will begin
mass producing Gallium Nitride (GaN) epi in 2007. According to a NikkeiNet Interactive
article,
Dowa Mining will work with the Nagoya Institute of Technology to develop wafers
made by layering gallium nitride, onto a sapphire substrate. The company will
integrate the technology developed by NGK Insulators Ltd. that is used for such
functions as the sedimentation of the light-emitting layer. The company expects
to spend 5 billion yen to start the business. Dowa has targeted
10 billion yen in sales in fiscal 2008. Dowa affirmed that their business will
not infringe on patents of other companies in the field such as Nichia. Our news features are reported
by the CompoundSemi News staff writers.
For submissions or content suggestions, you can contact us using
editor -at - compoundsemi.com
For more information and to reserve promotion space contact
Info7 -at - compoundsemi.com
or call +1 (512) 257-9888
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Commentary & Perspective...
Alan Thompson Reports on BLUE 2005
May 22, 2005...Our Sr. Technology Editor and longtime industry veteran, Dr. Alan Thompson,
not only helped organize BLUE 2005, he was there in Taiwan all week gathering
the news and filed the following report. I want to publicly thank Alan, Bob
Walker and his staff at YEBY Associates, and my partner, Tom Griffiths, President
and CEO of CompoundSemi Online. They all did a terrific job making this the
best BLUE ever. The hard part will be topping themselves next year! We'll be
reporting details of the meet over the next few weeks, but this overall report
from Alan is a must read. ---Jo Ann McDonald
Just completed, BLUE 2005 was held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, May 16-18, 2005. This
year’s theme, "LED Technologies Driving the Solid State Lighting
Revolution" lived up to expectations by covering the world markets
for HB-LEDs, reviewing various national solid state lighting programs and looking
at emerging technologies and applications. Three of the talks addressed IP and
financial market issues, a new and newsworthy topic this year.
The meeting was opened by co-chairs Dr Y.S.Liu of ITRI, Dr Robert Walker of
YEBY Associates, and Dr Y.M Yu of KOPTI (standing in for Dr Tae-Il Kim who was
unable to attend at the last minute). The lead speaker, one of four keynoters,
was Dr Robert Steele of Strategies Unlimited, who gave his usual detailed and
well documented account of the worldwide HB-LED marketplace. Key points were
a slowing growth rate in revenues as the cell phone market matures, falling
ASPs generally, and new markets opening but not quickly enough to keep CAGRs
in the 30 to 40% range. The outlook remains upbeat however with solid state
lighting promising some huge markets a few years out. Asif Anwar of Strategy
Analytics focused his talk on short wavelength laser diodes. While the overall
market is currently quite small and split among a variety of applications, he
predicts rapid growth (CAGR of 97%) dominated by next generation DVD using violet
(405 nm) GaN based devices.
The analyst talks were followed by detailed country reviews for Taiwan, Korea,
Japan and China. Taiwan continues to grow its dominant market share, while Korea
and China both show strong improvement. All have national programs with similar
broad goals of enabling general solid state lighting over the next decade. Especially
exciting was the appearance of China's Wu Ling, General Secretary of the China
SSL Alliance, because it was her first trip to Taiwan from Beijing.
George Mueller, Founding Chairman and CEO of Color Kinetics, gave the second
keynote with an inspiring look at both his company and his view of the future
of lighting. They have concentrated on the upper part of the lighting pyramid
(high value, niche volume), starting with color. He reported that LED based
systems have now become accepted as the best performers in this segment, and
gave numerous examples. They are now addressing the similar markets for white.
The achievement of 100 lm/W efficiencies, already shown in R&D, will make
white LED systems very attractive to designers and result in much broader adoption.
He sees this happening in the 2007-9 time frame. He gave the audience his list
of 7 "must have" properties if they are to successfully address this
market.
Dr Volker Haerle (Osram Opto Semiconductors) addressed the newer markets opening
up for HB-LEDs, most of which need high power, from a producer’s perspective.
The largest are automobile exterior lighting, including headlamps, LCD backlighting
and projection systems. Brent York (TIR Systems) concentrated on the architectural
and lighting applications from a system manufacturer’s viewpoint, and also
detailed the new Lexel technology, which was recently
disclosed in these pages. The latter takes a big step toward a self contained
"standard" subsystem that can be used by luminaire manufacturers who
then don’t need detailed knowledge of LEDs but can still design and build
products that will perform predictably and reliably. Dr H.S.Chung of Dongbu
Anam Semiconductor gave a comprehensive survey of applications being addressed
by Korean companies in particular, with LCD backlighting showing strong growth.
The audience was particularly excited to hear from another keynoter, Ms Patricia
Martone, of the Fish and Neave IP group of the law firm Ropes and Gray. It is
difficult to get a lawyer to discuss the topic of IP openly, so Patricia’s
presentation was unusual and informative. She talked about litigation in the
semiconductor industry in general and then zeroed in on the LED arena, talking
about the pros and cons of patents, cross-licensing and litigation. Everyone
in the room had an interest in these issues and we appreciated her openness.
Talks by Hans Mosesmann of Moors and Cabot and Jed Dorsheimer of Adams Harkness
and Hill, addressed industry and IP issues from the investment and financial
analysts’ perspectives. They brought up many issues and enlightened the
attendees, most of whom were from LED producing and consuming companies. Our
news and editorial people will be reviewing these IP-related talks in more detail
in the coming weeks in these pages.
The conference closed with several talks covering the technology and applications
of high power and white LEDs, including epi materials, phosphors, and packaging.
These reinforced earlier speakers’ predictions of a growing number of applications
for higher power devices, particularly white, and the huge promise of solid
state lighting coming closer each year, fueled by advances in performance and
cost. Two companies, Intematix and Phosphor Tech, introduced new phosphors,
offering a path for newer device manufacturers to avoid cross-licensing or litigation
problems with more established players. Developments such as these can only
help expand the field and help grow markets
For those who attended BLUE 2005, it was a wonderful opportunity to hear industry
leaders talk about markets and technology and to network with the movers and
shakers. All the speakers, sponsors and exhibitors deserve our thanks for helping
make this year's event be even more successful than BLUE 2004. If you couldn’t
make it this year, be sure to start making plans to be in Hsinchu next May for
BLUE 2006!
Alan Thompson, Senior Technology Editor
If you have news or
views to share about the compound semiconductor, LED or solid
state lighting industries
contact our Publisher, Tom Griffiths
His direct tel in Austin is +1-512-257-9888
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