Philips and Dialight benefit from LED focus 24 Jul 2012 Philips is continuing to drive the LED transformation within the lighting industry, while Dialight is benefitting from a focus on LED lighting for heavy industrial and hazardous applications. Philips has reported strong growth in sales of LED-based products, and says that these now account for 20% of its lighting revenue. Separately, Dialight has achieved success in specific market areas that benefit from features offered by its LED lighting products, such as ruggedness and reliability.
Philips
Philips has reported that the second-quarter revenue for its Lighting division increased by 6% year-on-year, led by double-digit sales growth in its Light Sources & Electronics segment, as well as high-single-digit sales growth in Automotive.
The company's lighting sales were just over EUR2 billion ($2.4 billion) for the quarter. A year-on-year decline in earnings was mainly due to higher-than-expected restructuring expenses, as well as operational issues at Lumileds and Consumer Luminaires.
LED-based sales grew by 37% year-on-year and now account for 20% of total lighting sales. The company is continuing with its strong focus on LEDs, and one of its stated aims within its lighting division is to accelerate the transformation to LED applications and solutions.
Philips claims to have the global #1 position in both LED lamps and in professional lamps, and says that it is the largest LED luminaires company in the world. It also claims to have a global #2 position in high-power LEDs, with a #1 position in flash and a #2 position in general illumination.
Philips' sales recovery in lighting has happened despite the current weakness in the construction market in regions with mature economies. Around 30% of Philips Lighting sales were driven by new build projects in the commercial sector, with a further 10% in the residential sector.
In the last year, Philips Lighting has shed almost 2000 employees, despite adding almost 1000 new staff via the acquisition of outdoor-lighting specialist Indal.
Dialight
Solid-state lighting has also been important for UK-based Dialight, which has reported revenue growth of 65% in this segment in the first six months of 2012 compared with the same period last year. The group's total revenue for the period was GBP61.1 million ($95 million).
"Despite the uncertain prospects for the world economy, our strategy of bringing compelling value propositions to sizeable and regulated markets through the application of LED technology continues to drive strong growth in both revenues and profits," said the company in its financial statement.
Specifically, Dialight's strategy continues to be a focus on the replacement of lights in heavy industrial and hazardous applications. In these markets, Dialight's products offer not only energy saving but also reliability, maintenance, safety and the ability to withstand rugged environments.
The company says that its development strategy is "one of utilizing short development cycles to bring enhanced products to market quickly and to enable the earliest use of the most advanced LEDs." This resulted in the development in the early part of this year of a 170W 17,000-lm high-bay light with an "industry-leading" efficiency of 100 lm/W and the ability to replace a 400W conventional light.
Dialight's products all carry a comprehensive 5-year warranty, with the expectation of several more years of savings. Improvements in LED technology have opened up the possibility of even longer lifetimes with insignificant changes in light output, the problem being how to ensure that the electronics driving the LEDs are as reliable as the LEDs themselves.
Dialight has recently announced its first product – the 17,000 lumen HighBay – with a guaranteed lifetime of 10 years. This has been achieved through redesign of the power electronics and the selection of high-reliability components for the critical functions of the circuits.
The company also said that the acquisition of Airinet was an important step in its drive to improve the value proposition offered by its products. "We estimate that the efficient use of controls can accelerate the payback on an SSL installation by up to six months. We expect to introduce a comprehensive power line control system to the industrial market by the end of this year," said the company.
