LEDs get respect at Lightfair

EDN on April 30 ran a successful workshop on designing with LEDs—you can read about some of the technologies presented here. Now, the technology is getting some respect for consumer applications, according to a New York Times report today on last week’s Lightfair International. “LED bulbs and fixtures dominated nearly every booth on the show floor,” the Times reports.

Nevertheless, compact fluorescent bulbs will remain the technology of choice for most consumers for years to come, the article reports, because of LEDs’ high prices — “more than $20 for a 40-watt-equivalent bulb.” It quotes Michael B. Petras Jr., president of GE Lighting, as saying, “The CFL market still has a lot of growth,” but notes that GE Lighting is devoting “50 percent of its research and development money to LED-related technologies.”

As evidence of the growth of LEDs, the article notes that Philips “expects its LED sales in the United States to increase to $200 million this year from $120 million in 2008, according to Kaj den Daas, president of Philips’s lighting group for the United States.”

The article concludes with a cautionary note about the technology, alluding to the poor quality of low-priced CFLs. It quotes Charles F. Jerabek, president and chief executive of Osram Sylvania, a unit of Siemens, as saying, ““It will be a huge injustice and setback if we allow the same thing to happen to LEDs.”