Televisions the one to watch for LED industry

May 26, 2006
A new report says that LCD backlighting will become a major LED growth driver and that televisions will overtake mobile phones as the key consumer product for LEDs.
Televisions will succeed mobile phone handsets in the next five years as the key driver for growth in the LED industry, as consumers switch over to flat-panel televisions, principally liquid-crystal display (LCD) TVs.

A recent report from Strategy Analytics entitled "Now Showing on a Television Near You: LEDs are the Ones to Watch," predicts that LED-based backlighting will account for almost 25 percent of the total LCD TV market in 2010.

The global television market is currently undergoing a major transition as traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) technologies are replaced by flat-panel technologies. The new technologies are principally liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), and plasma displays, as well as microdisplay-based rear-projection TVs (RPTV).

"Advances in display technology, lower pricing, and the availability of high-definition content are leading to greater consumer awareness of image quality and display performance," says Peter King, Director of the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service.

"LCD and other flat-panel display technologies will rapidly replace CRT-based sets over the next five years," adds King. "The flat-panel TV market will be worth over $72 billion by 2010."

After a slow start, LEDs are expected to penetrate the LCD backlighting market, with major players such as Samsung developing the required technologies (see Samsung improves LED-based LCD backlighting technology).

"LEDs are able to replace traditional cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) in the backlighting units of LCD televisions, offering advantages in terms of lifetime, environmental friendliness and most significantly enhanced color gamut," observes Asif Anwar, Director of Strategy Analytics GaAs service. "However there are a number of hurdles to overcome including cost and power consumption penalties."