China's semiconductor lighting industry research and development strategy

China's semiconductor lighting industry (LED industry) has formed a complete industrial chain from epitaxial growth, chip manufacturing, packaging, application, testing, and standards. Products are widely used in landscape lighting, backlight sources and general lighting and other fields. As of the end of 2010, China's LED industry has a market size of more than 100 billion yuan. According to the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", by 2015 China's LED industry scale will reach 500 billion yuan, and the industry is facing enormous business opportunities. However, the China Private Technology Promotion Association (hereinafter referred to as “China’s National Association for the Promotion of Civil Aviation”) has found through research that the current LED industry in China still faces many difficulties, and has even formed a stumbling block to the continued development of the industry.

1, lack of key technologies and core patents

Patented technology is an important means for major global LED manufacturers to gain competitive advantage and maintain market share. Domestic patented LED technology is not perfect. Upstream patents are mostly owned by foreign manufacturers. Technology is controlled by people. More than 80% of high-end chips come from foreign countries or Taiwan. Companies cannot extend to the high-end profit segment. Products are patented due to lack of principle patents. Blockade, export restrictions. Even at the concentration of more than 80% of companies in China, the packaging and application downstream areas are at a lower level. As LED technology follows Moore's Law to continuously improve performance, reduce costs, and greatly expand the application field, the market space has multiplied. Foreign LED companies with advanced R&D technology and good brand image “occupy cities” and occupy the market. Domestic LED companies face the challenge of how to further improve their own technology and build their own patent defense system.

2. Standards and testing methods lag behind industrial technology

The healthy development of the LED industry is inseparable from the related technologies and product standards, but the rapid development of emerging industry technologies has brought about common problems such as detection technology and standard formulation. At present, the products lack complete industry specification standards, and the quality is uneven, resulting in great bruising. Market confidence and enthusiasm. On the other hand, the LED industry has been highly valued by the government and has vigorously promoted product demonstration applications, forming a situation where standardization and quality evaluation methods lag behind technological development and market applications. How to ease the contradiction and break through the bottleneck is not only a new task of standardization research work, but also a new task within the scope of technical quality supervision.

3, the product price is too high, commercial application promotion is difficult

The state has launched the "Ten City Ten Thousand Miles" LED energy-saving plan last year. Currently, 42 cities have been included in the plan. However, in addition to the gradual popularity of LED lighting for decoration, the vast majority of LED general lighting applications are still limited to government demonstration projects. The main reason for difficult marketing is the high price of LED lighting products. As chips account for 30% or more of the cost of LED products, China's lighting-grade high-end LED chips mainly rely on imports, and the prices are relatively expensive, resulting in high prices for LED lighting products with equal lightness, and no comparison with ordinary consumers. Great attraction.

4, product homogeneity competition is fierce, lack of leading companies and leading brands

China's LED industry has a large number of companies and overall progress has been made. However, the scale of the enterprises is generally small and there is no leading company. As most of the LED manufacturers have submitted product R&D and major module production to the solution providers, the LED entry threshold has been reduced, and the market competition has become fierce. At present, there are 1950 LED packaging companies in China, and the number of new LED products applied by enterprises is less than 530; LED lighting company has more than 300 companies, and the products are basically in the stage of plagiarism. Homogeneous competition has caused price wars and smoke, lack of benchmarking brands, the size of the company is difficult to grow, the industry lacks credibility. It is imminent to cultivate leading enterprises and accelerate the construction of independent brands.

5. Overheated industrial investment and blind and low-level repeated construction

With the advancement of the World Expo, Asian Games, and the “Ten Thousand Cities” policy, the demand in the LED market has greatly increased. Multiple cities and districts have developed the LED industry as a pillar industry. The domestic LED market has an optimistic outlook. Domestic and overseas investment and mergers have accelerated the process of integrating upstream and downstream businesses. Traditional lighting companies, state-owned capital, and private capital have also entered the industry and there has been an upsurge in industrial investment. For example, MOCVD, a key equipment for the production of epitaxial wafers in the above tour, has installed 300 imported equipment in 2010. In the next three years, the country plans to import more than 1,000 units, which is 10 times more than in 2008. Without scientific decision-making and rational planning of LED industry layout, the large-scale centralized introduction of MOCVD key equipment may lead to a large-scale outbreak of low-end chip production, making the LED industry repeat the mistake of China's 2008, 2009 polysilicon investment fever failure.

6. The supporting policy of the government and the status quo of industrial development are not matched
The LED industry is one of the strategic emerging industries that the country has focused on fostering and developing. National, provincial, and municipal regions have increased investment in support for technical research and demonstration projects. They have introduced a large number of industrial support policies and pilot projects through applied engineering programs. Support the use of LED lighting products. This series of measures has effectively promoted the technological progress of China's LED industry. However, the next five years will be a crucial period for LED transition from the R&D and demonstration stage to the full marketization stage. As an industry support policy, it needs to be more systematic and meet the current state of industrial development, and from the consumer level, tax reduction, purchase subsidies, and government procurement As well as refinement of government funding and preferential loans at the R&D level.

In summary, the dilemma faced by China's LED industry needs to be solved from the industrial development strategy. This is because the LED industry not only possesses the characteristics of a new industry, but also involves semiconductors and traditional electric light sources. Its development history has its own internal laws. If only the pursuit of individual advanced technical indicators is used, even if the investment is huge, it may be that the various links in the industry are not developed. Balanced, industrial chain out of touch, due to abnormal industrial development, support policies do more with less or even more.

Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Minister of Science and Technology, pointed out in his speech that the innovation method work should be taken as an important starting point for the national "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" scientific and technological work and provide methodological support for scientific and technological innovation. To develop China's LED emerging industries, it is more necessary to apply innovative methods, clarify industrial development goals, explore industrial development paths, understand the differences between the level of industrial development and advanced countries, find reasonable and operable tools and tools, and improve industrial competitiveness. Catch up and surpass international competitors.

The benchmarking method pioneered by Xerox Corporation in the United States in 1979 is a means to achieve system optimization through results comparison. It is used to identify and implement the optimal plan to improve corporate performance, and is widely used in enterprise management to evaluate performance. The Guangdong Provincial Semiconductor Lighting Engineering and Production Innovation Alliance organized a research institute for standards, inspections, and LED technology. Using the benchmarking method, it took the lead in the nation to research the “Semiconductor Lighting Product Evaluation Benchmarking System” and promote it in Guangdong Province's green lighting city demonstration project. Application has attracted widespread attention in the industry.

As an innovative method for the research of emerging industry technology standards, the “benchmarking system” solves the contradiction between the continuous expansion of LED lighting market demand and the delay in the detection and evaluation of technological development. It ensures the “Minimum Ten Cities” of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the National Development and Reform Commission, and transportation. The successful implementation of demonstration pilot projects such as the “Application of Semiconductor Lighting Product Demonstration Project” is of great significance. Therefore, China National Association of Civil Aviation is organizing and coordinating various resources, based on the benchmarking system, to study the theoretical and practical issues in the development of LED emerging industries in China, and to track and investigate new developments, new problems, and new ideas in the development of the LED industry and promote the LED industry in China. Sustained, stable and healthy development.