Nichia and Panasonic Industry Watch

In Japan's LED lighting market, Panasonic's market share reached 25%, ranking first. Of the lighting products produced by the company in 2013, 80% were LED light sources. Panasonic announced its 2014 fiscal year financial results at the end of April 2014, in which lighting-related "Eco Solutions" business unit revenue will be 1.637 trillion yuan (about 16.07 billion US dollars), operating profit will be 62.5 billion yen. Compared with fiscal year 2013, they decreased by 2.2% and 32.1% respectively.

It is worth noting that Panasonic estimated that the lighting business revenue for 2015 fiscal year will be 345 billion yen, which is a slight increase of 7.4% compared with fiscal 2013. This is mainly due to several factors, including Japan's LED market penetration will approach saturation. The development of consumer lighting towards parity, Japan's excise tax increase, and so on, so the company's future business direction will focus on the corporate lighting market, and increase the overseas market revenue target to 25%.

In contrast, Japan's largest LED component plant Nichia's overseas market share of the revenue has been significantly increased, especially in mainland China has reached 29% in 2013, an increase of 12.1 percentage points over the previous year; In contrast, Japan accounted for The company’s revenue was 37.5%, a decrease of 12% from the previous year.

In terms of applications, Nichia Chemicals will focus on general lighting and automotive applications, mainly due to the decline in display backlight output value that accounted for the largest proportion of its revenue in the past, and several well-known Japanese carmakers have adopted the company’s LED components. The new LED components are also developing towards high currents and high beams.

As the world's largest LED manufacturer, the Nichia Chemical Investment Program continues to be in progress. In 2014, the semiconductor semiconductor equipment investment sites of the company included Anan City, Tatsuki and Naruto Plants. Although the investment amount was not as high as it was in previous years, It is not difficult to see that the company wants to maintain its global leading position.