Ushio Inc of Tokyo, Japan has announced that in November it will start sales of Superline LEDs, a series of LED MR16 halogen replacement lamps from Soraa Inc of Fremont, CA, USA, which develops solid-state lighting technology built on ‘GaN on GaN’ substrates. The Japanese company says that, as a series of next-generation LED halogen replacement lamps, Superline LED delivers not only the brightness of halogen lamps demanded by users, but also faithfully recreates the quality and properties of the light. The company plans to sell the produc...

Recently, Panasonic 20W LED lamp Clear Type, has been awarded the Sustainability Award, in addition to the Gold Award in the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) sponsored International Design Excellence Awards 2012 (IDEA).   Recognized as the most outstanding entry that couples design excellence with environmental responsibility, the IDSA unveiled and presented the Sustainability Award to the Panasonic LED light bulb at the award ceremony held on August 18 in the US. The jury appreciated the LED light bulb's "remar...

According Tech-On.com, Kyoto University’s professor Hiroyuki Yano, has added resin, etc to paper or its material (pulp) to make transparent paper. This breakthrough was announced at the New Technology Presentation Meetings, which the university organized Aug 24, 2012, in Tokyo. Yano expects that the new technologies will be applied to transparent OLED substrates, substrates of organic thin-film photovoltaic (PV) cells, electronic paper, materials for car windows, packaging containers, etc. Cellulose nanofibers, which constitute pulp, have a width of 10-20nm ...

Sony has decided to shift more contract orders to AU Optronics Corp. (AUO) and its production arms from Hon Hai, likely due to Hon Hai build ties-up with its major competitor Sharp in the market for LCD TVs. According to industry insiders, as soon as building partnership with Sony, AUO has seen orders for LCD TVs significantly increase since the beginning of Q3 in 2012, with lots of which allegedly coming from the Japanese customer. Meanwhile, BriView Electronics Corp., a production arm of AUO, Lextar Electronics Corp., an LED maker, and I-C...

Toyoda Gosei has undergone a hard time in the first half of 2011, but its revenue firmed up till second half, to 4th quarter was fully restored. And yet its Q1 revenue of 2012 also keeps the very successful performance just like Q4 last year, even the company increase profit forecast for Q2. The LED department of Toyoda Gosei had hard time when Q3 of 2011 as well. Until the new LED product line which Saga factory lead in goes into MP and the demands of Tabled PC backlighting with LED potted elements increased, Q4 revenue recovered remarkably. Besides, the revenu...

Panasonic is to reform its head office and governance as of October 1, to reduce internally focused work and focus on customer needs. The strategy involves reviewing the mission of the corporate R&D division, transferring “themes” and personnel to their relevant business domains within Panasonic. Corporate R&D’s new mission will be to create new business and technologies in long-term growth areas and develop uniform technologies across the entire company. The personnel working on existing business fields will gear their R&D toward midterm bu...

Panasonic in Japan has kicked off selling its new LED bulb "LDA6L/C" since July, 20. With the new bright glass chimney, “LDA6L/C” can emit its light to lamp socket. In addition, the bulb utilizes the center installation technology to produce the dazzling light. Other features as following, E26 base Output: 485lm Lifespan: 40000 hours Power: 6.7W Colour temperature: warm white Size of outer diameter: 60 mm × 117 mm   ...

-Will mass produce on a new line at Kaga Toshiba Electronics – Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it will start mass production of white light-emitting diode (LED) on a production line that the company will construct in the 200mm wafer facility at Kaga Toshiba Electronics Corporation, a production base for discrete products in northern Japan. Mass production will start from October 2012. The energy efficiency and long life of white LED is winning wide-scale application in general purpose lighting, TV backlighting, etc. and significa...

Toshiba Lighting & Technology (TLT) recently has announced that the company schedules to close its four lighting factories including Nagai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Yamagata by the end of March, 2013. Currently, it has seven factories in total. Nagai factory is major in producing LED bulbs and incandescent lights for special use. Tsukuba factory is dedicated in manufacturing lighting production for residential application. Ibaraki factory is engaged in making metal parts/resin parts for lighting products. Yamagata factory mainly supplies power circuit. According to the...

Because Japanese government urges manufactures and retailers to promote the application of LED bulbs as well as the series of LED bulbs tends to complete, Panasonic has announced to stop production of incandescent bulbs used in household market before October 31th, 2012. Compared to the deadline that the company has planned to stop on 31th, March in 2013, it has aheaded of schedule by half year. According to Panasonic, the number of LED bulbs produced by the company has achieved to 48, however, the number of incandescent bulbs has greatly dropped from 207 in 2008 to 4. I...

It was just a few days ago when Japan-based LED maker, Toyota Gosei Co., Ltd., announced its plan to manufacture new LED products using gallium nitride substrates as base components. Measuring up to several hundred µms in thickness, these essential materials, once properly assembled with 1mmx1mm LED chips, provide potential brightness of up to 400 lumens, approximately three times the amount delivered by LEDs fabricated on sapphire substrates. As has been the case with the 8-inch, silicon-based wafer level packaging technology introduced a few years earlier, it is b...

Officials from Sharp have disclosed that the company plans to replace all 190,000 fluorescent lights in its offices and factories in Japan with LED lights to cut power consumption. The work will start later this month at Sharp's head office in Osaka and some other facilities. In addition, at offices and plants in the Kansai region, where the power supply is expected to be tight this summer, some 60,000 lights will be replaced with LEDs before the end of June. It will take several months for the electronics maker to complete the replacement work. And fully shifting ...

Sony and Panasonic have announced to partner for OLED TV push. The pair's work will come to fruition in the form of OLED TVs mass-produced in 2013. Neither has given any details about the TVs they will ship at that time. And Sony's Deputy President of home entertainment products, Noriaki Negishi, confirmed to Reg Hardware earlier this year will be aggressively promoting OLED technology within a year. “2013 will be the year when we will really fight back with new technologies," he said in March.  ...

Hitachi Appliances Inc has announced to develop world’s first E26-base wide-light-distribution-type LED light bulb, "LDA15D-G," which can emits the amount of light equivalent to that of a 100W incandescent light bulb (1,520lm). The new bulb is to be released on July 13, 2012, in Japan. According to the company, it realized the amount of light and a wide light distribution angle like the light of an incandescent light bulb by employing a high-efficiency LED module, the "Slit Structured Body," whose slit has an about 1.3 times wider radiation...

Nichia has developed a new surface mount LED device (SMD) for outdoor full color display applications. Under Nichia part number "NSSM032", this product is a surface mount device for all weather applications. Waterproof and silicone potted, NSSM032 is easily integrated by user due to the thicker package size and lower position of leads. Plus, the black external package color provides high contrast ratio for superior image definition. Nichia says that a higher level of outdoor screen image quality can be realized with NSSM032 even when viewed from wide a...

A Japanese group has scheduled to set up a $200-million LED light factory in the Philippines by the end of 2012, expecting to create one of the world’s largest LED light factories, according to Japan Environment Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Jented). Jented pointed out that the plant’s planned output is around one million units a year of LED lights. And according to Jented country representative Rod Cabrera, Jented will partner with Tagaytay Mountain Peak Corp. (TMPC), a local development company to complete the project. TMPC chairma...

Sharp has released a 90-inch new Aquos LED TV, which stands 4 feet tall and is 6 feet, 8 inches across, marking the biggest LED high-def television on the market. Sharp brags the set is less than 5 inches thick and weighs 114 pounds. The new TV could be sold at the price of $10,999.99. Consumer Reports didn't render a verdict after just a quick look, but noted that Sharp "has definitely taken the lead in larger TV screen sizes." It cited the 60-, 70- and 80-inch sets from the past, saying they had typically done well in TV ratings, although some of t...

Sony has showcased a resolution of 500ppi for OLED panels in a symposium at SID 2012, as high as those of the latest LCD panels. The company applied OLED materials with a pixel pitch of 51μm (dot pitch: 17μm), which is equivalent to 500ppi, by using an offset printing method (thesis number: 68.4L). Sony used the offset printing method to make a 270ppi (VGA) 3-inch OLED panel that it announced at SID 2011. It realizes full color display by applying red (R) and green (G) layers with the offset printing method and combining them with a blue (B) common...

According to The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japanese government has encouraged major electronics retailers and home appliance makers to voluntarily halt production and sales of incandescent bulbs to save power this summer. The government plans to submit a written request under the names of Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano and Environment Minister Goshi Hosono to an industry group, probably sometime this week. The industry side has indicated it will oblige. It is extremely rare for the government to ask retailers and manufacturers to refrain voluntarily from sell...

The world’s No.5 power supply vendor, FSP Group has supported a considerable percentage of LED lighting power supplies for leading hotels, department stores and hypermarkets across Japan. According to the company’s executives, due to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed a nuclear power plant, Japan is suffering 10-15% power shortage. Japanese consumers surge to use energy-saving products as LED lamps.   Thus Japanese LED power supply market has brought new opportunity to FSP. And LED lighting power supplies account for 6-8% of ...

Recently, Panasonic has set up a target to sell the total number of 12 million LED light bulbs in Japan market since from April 2012 to March 2013, which will equal to 1.5 times of it sales last year's (April 2011-March 2012). Additionally, the company is to release a new LED bulb equivalent to 40 W incandescent. The new bulb only consumes 6.4 W power, and has brightness of 85 lumens as well as lasts 40000 hours. According to Panasonic, in 2010, the total number of demand for LED light bulbs is 25.54 million. Panasonic estimated this year, the number will up ...

Toshiba has developed a new OLED lighting product with the luminous efficiency of 91 lm/w on June 6. And the company has scheduled to mass production in 2014, paving the way for OLED lighting market. According to Toshiba, the size of the new product is 7 x8cm. Compared with similar products sold on the market, Toshiba’s OLED only consumes less than half of the electric power.   And resources from market research in Japan have informed that Japan's domestic lighting market scale will surpass OLED 100 billion yen in 2020. However, high manufacturi...

A patent dispute between Nichia and Everlight never come to an end. On June 4, Nichia’s counsels held a press conference in Taiwan to announce that the company has lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court of Japan against a Japan Patent Office’s ruling in favor of Everlight.   According to Everlight, Japan Patent Office rendered a decision on May 8 this year, holding that the patent JP3503139 is invalid. Everlight said the ruling includes invalidation of Claim 1, which is the main claim of the patent at issue. Nichia’s counsels pointed out ...

Taiwan CHIMEI has announced to kick off LED lighting in Japan market with the partnership with Japan Waseda University Institute of Bussiness. According to CHIMEI, its LED desk lamps are sold in Japanese large stores such as Bic Camera Inc, Amazon.com.

Japanese Nara Institute of Science and Technology has made a breakthrough on integrated optical neural stimulation and observation device incorporating an LED and a CMOS image sensor, which will help researchers in the field of optogenetics, which involves the use of light to alter the behaviour of cells. Compared with a CMOS sensor, which is an approach that has been adopted by engineers at the University of Strathclyde, UK, it is possible to build a similar system with an avalanche photodiode array. According to lead-author Takashi Tokuda from Nara Institute...

According to Japan LED maker Nichia's website, Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. ("Everlight") has filed patent nullity proceedings in Japan Patent Office against 19 patents held by Nichia Corporation ("Nichia"). Among such Nichia patents is the "YAG Patent", which is the Japanese Patent No. 2927279 ("279 Patent") and is directed to white LEDs by the combinations of blue LED and YAG phosphor. The JPO held on April 9, 2012, that the 279 Patent is valid over the Everlight's challenge. Nichia also sa...

Everlight has filed patent nullity proceedings in Japan Patent Office against 19 patents held by Nichia. Among such Nichia patents is the "YAG Patent", which is the Japanese Patent No. 2927279 ("279 Patent") and is directed to white LEDs by the combinations of blue LED and YAG phosphor. The JPO held on April 9, 2012, that the 279 Patent is valid over the Everlight's challenge. Two other patents, Japanese Patent Nos. 2778349 (electrode patent), and 2540791 (anneal patent), have been also found by the JPO as valid. As such, YAG ...

Toshiba has expanded its cooperation with the Louvre Museum to replace part of the interior lighting of the Louvre with its own LED lighting. It’s the Phase 2 of a renovation project that Toshiba and the Louvre Museum have cooperated since 2010. During the Phase 2, the Louvre Museum will see renovation of LED lighting in important interior spaces. It includes specific exhibit lighting for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa , and for the Red Rooms, which display famous masterpieces such as Jacques-Louis David's Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I...

Decision rendered by the Japan Patent Office Everlight Electronics Co. Ltd. filed an invalidation action with the Japan Patent Office against Nichia Corporation’s YAG white light LED patent (patent No. JP3503139). Everlight has received the decision from the Japan Patent Office recently. The Japan Patent Office rendered a decision on May 8th, 2012, holding that the patent JP3503139 is invalid. The ruling includes the invalidation of Claim 1, which is the main claim of the patent at issue. Everlight believes that this decision is entirely rea...

Hitachi Appliances is to release 80 W-equivalent LED Bulb on June 15th. The new bulb gives off almost 1160 lumens, and consumes 11.4 watts. It can be available in E26-base, and diffuses light like the incandescent light bulb. With the new bulb, it can not only improve the brightness, but also reduce power consumption. Nuclear power shortage has driven up demand for LED lamps after the March 11 earthquake. Hitachi Appliances will diversify LED bulbs on brightness and light distribution to cater different demands from customers....