For many LED manufacturers, 2014 has been a prosperous and challenging year. Lighting market demands were stronger than expected in 1H14, leading to a period of LED supply shortages. Despite the positive development, the industry was impacted by clients double booking and distributors rising inventory levels during second half of the year. Many manufacturers were impacted by the markets cooling demands, and price competition as a result. As a result a lot of manufacturers’ performance in first and second half of the year was very polarized.
As Chinese LED chip manufacturers improve their technology and scale up production capacity, China’s LED chip production capacity increased from 27% in 2013 to 36% in 2014. In the past, Chinese LED backlight or lighting applications largely relied on Taiwanese or international LED manufacturers, but this is no longer the case. Due to Chinese package manufacturers increasing usage of domestic LED chips, prices are increasingly competitive, leading to Chinese manufacturers growing market share in the global LED industry.
