The global LED light bulb pricing has been falling in 2013 because some large-size industry leading brands have introduced low-price products. Market observers believe demand in the residential LED lighting market is expected to grow and simplified designs are likely to bring down costs by 20% in 2013.
US-based LED chipmaker Cree entered the LED lighting fixture market in the second half of 2012 and in March 2013, the firm introduced retrofit 40W white light LED light bulbs with a retail price of US$9.97/unit. Europe-based Philips followed suit by introducing retrofit 60W LED lighting bulbs with a retail price of US$14.97/unit, and it noted that product prices are likely to fall below US$10/unit before the end of 2013.
Europe-based Osram has also announced plans to introduce retrofit 40W LED light bulbs in Germany with a retail price of only EUR9.95/unit (US$13/unit) in June.
Industry sources noted that the brightness efficiency of LED light bulbs surpassed energy-saving light bulbs since the second half of 2012. In particular, the price gap between 10W LED and energy-saving light bulbs has begun to narrow.
Taiwan-based LED packaging house Everlight introduced LED light bulbs with brightness efficiency around 75lm/W in 2012 and by the end of 2013, the efficiency is expected to improve to 100lm/W. Market observers noted that Taiwan-based LED lighting firms will continue strengthening the competitive advantage on price-performance ratio and are likely to introduce high wattage LED light bulbs.
According to Biing-Jye Lee, chairman of Taiwan-based chipmaker Epistar, due to price competition driven by international brands, prices of retrofit 60W LED light bulbs have fallen from US$19.99/unit to US$12.99/unit. Lee believes Taiwan-based chips can help to lower the prices of retrofit 60W LED light bulbs to below US$10/unit. Lee stated that the new product will be introduced by the end of the third quarter.
