2017-2020 LED intelligent lighting market development and communication technology change trend

After years of low-cost competition and industry consolidation, the LED lighting industry has entered a mature stage. The product cost performance has been greatly improved, the application market penetration rate has increased, and the traditional application market has gradually saturated. The competitive advantage of enterprises is gradually shifting from enterprise scale and product cost to product and technology capabilities, and the added value of products is increasingly prominent.

The rise of the Internet of Things has led LED lighting to move towards high-value digital lighting in small networks. Intelligent systems can collect users, environment and other information through various sensors, perform data analysis, and then adjust equipment. The integration of personalized, people-oriented smart lighting is becoming the focus of future industrial development.

In 2017, with the development of technology, mature products, active promotion of manufacturers, and popularization of concepts related to smart lighting, the global smart lighting market has entered a stage of rapid development. The market size is close to 4.6 billion US dollars, and the annual growth rate is 95%. The market is expected to continue to grow in the next few years, and by 2020 the global smart lighting scale will reach $13.4 billion.

Smart lighting as a smart city access port has inherent advantages, and major manufacturers are actively deploying

Smart lighting not only achieves higher profit margins, but is also an excellent access point for smart cities. With the continuous development of cities, energy consumption, infrastructure and other aspects bring more and more challenges. By 2030, the global urban population is expected to reach 60%, and urban energy consumption accounts for about 75% of the total global energy consumption. %, and lighting will account for nearly 40% of the city's total energy consumption. As an important part of smart cities, smart lighting has inherent advantages in the number of IoT access points, and governments are also actively promoting the development of smart cities.

Lighting giants including Philips and Osram have also laid out this market. In 2015, Philips Lighting participated in the smart connected road lighting pilot project in Los Angeles, deploying Philips CityTouch intelligent connected road lighting management system in Los Angeles, and Philips Lighting will be in 2017. The intelligent interconnected road lighting system was introduced to China, and combined with China Telecom's next-generation Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology and Tianyi cloud technology services, it can be connected to include urban emergency systems, traffic signal management systems, security monitoring systems, etc. Various smart city applications will jointly accelerate the construction of smart cities in China.

In January 2018, OSRAM released the new smart city central management platform SymphoCityTM (an open platform system that integrates software and hardware). In addition to managing lighting, it also enables a multi-functional integrated smart city central management platform for integrated management of urban security, environment, energy and communications. This will help city managers improve efficiency, reduce costs and promote the development of smart cities.

In addition, Chinese manufacturers Feile Audio and Chau Ming Technology are also promoting smart street lamps. Currently, they mainly undertake projects related to the Chinese government. Feile Audio has signed a smart city strategic cooperation agreement with more than 20 cities, and with Guizhou Province. The Gonggong County Government plans to build a project with a total investment of approximately RMB 4 billion.

Communication technology continues to change, and now diversified development trend

The Internet of Things and smart lighting have reached the current stage, and various communication technologies such as DALI, ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LoRa, NB-IoT, Sigfox, Z-wave, and EnOcean have emerged on the market.

In the field of indoor lighting, although there are many wireless communication protocols available, DALI cable technology set for lamps still holds the highest market share. The system based on the DALI protocol has a distributed intelligent module, each module has digital control and digital communication capabilities, and address and lighting scene information are stored in the memory of each DALI module. The DALI module performs digital element communication, command and status information through the DALI bus, and realizes functions such as lamp switching, dimming control, and system setting.

The system is more stable and reliable, which is the biggest advantage of wired control technology. However, with the maturity of wireless technology, it will become the mainstream control technology in the future. It is expected that the market share of DALI will gradually shrink in the future, and ZigBee and Bluetooth will occupy the dominant position, among which ZigBee is the most common wireless communication protocol for lighting networking. Due to the long development time and relatively mature technology, ZigBee's network architecture has its own advantages, and it is more energy efficient. Taking the Chinese market as an example, more and more Chinese manufacturers have begun to join the Zigbee Alliance, and products have gradually shifted from the past to the domestic market.

Outdoor lighting, ZigBee is also the most widely used at this stage. However, due to the short application distance, there are many restrictions on the application of outdoor lighting. It is expected that after 2017, ZigBee's market share of outdoor intelligent lighting will decline slowly.

With the rise of the Internet of Things, many low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) designed for low-bandwidth, low-power, long-distance, and massively connected IoT applications have emerged. NB-IoT with licensed spectrum and LoRa (Long Range) and Sigfox with unlicensed spectrum are the mainstream. LPWAN's long-distance communication capabilities can support large-scale IoT deployments and avoid frequent battery replacements and lower maintenance costs.

In several low-power wide-area networks, LoRa is commercially available earlier and more open. In 2015, the industry alliance was established, and it is currently the most widely used in LPWAN. The NB-IoT, which achieves standard freeze in 2016, has a competitive advantage in smart lighting scenarios that require high reliability due to the use of licensed spectrum to avoid wireless interference and carrier-grade security and quality assurance. The market share growth rate is the fastest.

In general, the current market for low-power wide-area networks is relatively fragmented and the market share is still low. It is expected that with the development of technology and perfect functions, market concentration will gradually increase.