The ONE Music Group announced its U.S. debut of The ONE Smart Piano and The ONE Light keyboard at select online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Recently named a CES 2016 Innovation Awards Honoree in the Smart Home product category by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)TM, The ONE Smart Piano is the first and only Apple MFi-certified smart piano that works with an app to teach users to play.

Intense price competitions in the LED market over the last few years has caused manufacturers a lot of pain, but it is also the driving force of technology innovation. An emerging trend is the transition of L1 manufacturers migration into L2 manufacturing, projected Sean Zhou, Regional Marketing Director Asia, Lumileds at LEDforum 2015, held at Room 201, National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center, Taipei, Taiwan.

LEDs combined with solar energy are becoming a top choice in humanitarian aid missions to Africa, which aim to eliminate harmful pollution from burning kerosene lamps that has been the main cause of household air pollution and estimated to be the cause of death of 500,000 people in the continent each year, reported The Conversation.

Plessey announced that it has collaborated with 8Point3 to develop and produce a high efficiency architectural lighting product range. 8Point3 is a provider of market leading, energy-saving, solid-state lighting solutions for a range of solid state lighting solutions for both the private and public sectors.  Plessey has signed a long-term commercial agreement with 8point3 to supply the lighting modules, including the company's MaGIC™ GaN-on-Silicon LEDs.

Philips introduced two new smartphones that employs its Soft Blue technology to reduce eye strain in October 31, 2015 in China, according to an article from Vine Report.

LEDinside covered many different LED applications over the course of the last few years, but few have taken it “skin-deep”.

Have you ever been walking the aisles of a Supermarket or Big Box store, maybe you had a little trouble finding a few things and ended up in there a little longer than you anticipated. Then, all of a sudden, you feel so agitated and uncomfortable that every passing minute seems to make you feel worse? There’s definitely a time limit to those stores or at least an awareness when we’ve entered the penalty time and need to get out of there ASAP. There is certainly no shortage of bothersome elements in those stores, despite their convenience, but one of the main culprits for that fatigued, annoyed feeling you get is the lighting. It’s very apparent how artificial the lighting in those places is.

German lighting manufacturer Osram has initiated the sales process of its lamps business, which it intends to spin-off operations from the group by next April and legally by July, a Reuters report cited a company spokesman saying recently.

Chinese LED manufacturer MLS, or also known as Forest Lighting announced recently it plans to optimize the integration of its business resources, and strengthen business competitiveness by entering the bid for Osram Licht lighting business.

Cree’s fully owned subsidiary Wolfspeed, and Lockheed Martin have jointly developed a special chip to help track down space debris including remains of satellites orbiting the earth, reported Triangle Business Journal.

As India prepares for the upcoming lighting festival Diwali, one of the biggest celebrations in the nation, decorative lighting products imported from China are becoming highly visible in Patna, reported the Times of India.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a minimally invasive procedure for gallbladder removal, and one of the most common surgical procedures worldwide. While the procedure has a very high success rate, 1 in 200 patients will sustain serious bile duct injury, primarily due to misidentification of the biliary anatomy. With 800,000 procedures carried out in the United States each year that means in the U.S. alone 4,000 patients will be seriously injured.

For heavy gamers out there, have you ever wondered what potions used by characters would look like in real life? A LED desk lamp mimicking a color changing elixir from RPGs is being sold on ThinkGeek is bringing the virtual item into reality.

Royal Philips, the global leader in lighting, today announced that the City of Los Angeles (LA) will be the first city in the world to deploy 100 Philips SmartPoles – connected LED street lighting that includes fully integrated 4G LTE wireless telecommunications technology by Ericsson. The collaboration between Philips and Ericsson delivers on the latest Internet of Things (IoT) innovation and provides a double benefit to LA citizens: high quality, public lighting that is energy efficient as well as improved network performance in dense urban areas.

India’s LED bulb retrofit incentives under the DELP program implemented by Energy of Efficiency Services (EESL), a joint venture of Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) of the Power Minister have slashed LED bulb prices significantly, reported theEconomic Times.

Georgia Power announced that roadways across the state will benefit from higher-quality lighting thanks to a new multi-year partnership with local governments. The company, which owns and maintains approximately 400,000 roadway lights for local governments, is in the process of converting thousands of high-pressure sodium (HPS) roadway lights to new energy efficient LEDs. The LED lighting upgrade is available to cities and municipalities upon request.

Most of the smart color tunable LED bulbs on the market at the moment require smartphone apps to control the light, but a duo from Amsterdam plans release a simple interactive cube free from buttons, Bluetooth and WiFi connections.

Several factors have caused manufacturers to flood emerging blue sea markets, such as China’s soon to be implemented 13th five-year plan; drying up LED subsidies; price wars in lighting industry that have resulted in pricing and selling bulbs per kilogram; and industry restructures which have benefited the expansion of big players on the market. SMEs in the industry have been treading on thin ice.  When the UV LED emerged as a blue sea market in the LED industry, only a few manufacturers were competing in the market sector. Fast forward to present, manufacturers once standing on the sidelines speculating are starting to jump in. In the near future, it is possible that this niche market might be on the same road as blue LEDs and become another hotly contended red sea market.

Venture Lighting Europe has supplied to a number of street lighting projects throughout the UK as a cost-effective replacement of previous lamps. The company has seen many successful applications of its lamps across London with over 2000 of Venture’s street lighting solutions supplied, and another 1000 in Aberdeen.

U.S. regulators “scared” the LED industry this week, by halting Lumileds sell to Go Scale Capital. The deal has been put on hold by Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) over unstated concerns. Lumileds representatives, however, assured the public that the deal is still in progress and will be sealed by next quarter or first quarter of 2016 latest.

The University of Alabama’s Sewell – Thomas Stadium will soon make history as one of the first NCAA baseball fields lit with an LED light source.

Resta Peth, a region in Pune City in the state of Maharashtra, India, has rolled out its LED bulb distribution scheme, reported The Times of India.

Amerlux CEO and President Chuck Campagna has announced a partnership withEnlighted, Inc., the leading provider of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for commercial buildings and retail applications. The agreement will enable integration of the most intelligent and advanced lighting sensors and controls with innovative LED lighting fixtures from Amerlux.

At this week’s Meeting of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS 2015), imec and CMST (imec’s associated lab at Ghent University) present a novel technology for thermoplastically deformable electronics enabling low-cost 2.5D free-form rigid electronic objects. The technology is under evaluation in Philips LED lamp carriers, a downlight luminaire and a omnidirectional light source, to demonstrate the potential of this technology in innovative lighting applications.

An Israeli design group kicked off a fundraising campaign for a sound activated gaming dice called Boogie Dice on Kickstarter, targeting a US $50,000 fund and has received US $113,842 so far.

Plessey announced today that it will provide CIRCADIAN ZircLight, a global leader in providing 24/7 workforce performance solutions, with an LED package solution for the development of circadian-modulated, smart LED lighting systems and lamps.

Philips plan to sell Lumileds to Chinese investment consortium led by Go Scale Capital for US $2.8 billion might “unravel following opposition from U.S. regulators,” reported Bloomberg on Monday.

A world-first study by Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Sleep in Early Childhood Research Group has revealed pre-schoolers exposed to more light earlier in day tend to weigh more.

Chung Hoon Lee, CEO of world’s leading LED manufacturer Seoul Semiconductor (//www.seoulsemicon.com) announces that Wicop, following its massive success in LCD backlighting applications, is experiencing rapid adoption in the global lighting market after the September 2015 release thanks to its ultra compact size and outstanding efficiency.

As Beneq continues to expand its business of Lumineq® displays for extreme conditions, there is a growing need for wider distribution of the company’s rugged thin film electroluminescence (TFEL) displays as well as the fully transparent TASEL® displays, which have a substantial installed base and range of interesting future applications in the defense, transportation outdoor instrumentation and medical electronics markets.