Osram has entered talks with potential buyers of its lighting business, a couple of Chinese players Foshan Lighting, NVC, and Yankon Lighting have been named as companies that have shown interest. ABB is collaborating with Philips to bring smart lighting into homes in China. Several interesting research have emerged this week. Astronauts might be able to start their own vegetable gardens in space ships in the future, with specific wavelength LED grow lights from the University of Purdue. Another research team from Denmark are predicting nanowires could become the future technology for LEDs. Lastly, research on new optic designs and devices could enable future smartphones to be equipped with photosensors that determine whether a person has diabetes or pregnant. Epistar Chairman B.J. Lee outlined three major market trends at a shareholders meeting in Taipei, Taiwan this week. Lee projected the company’s orders would rebound in 3Q15, and that the number of newly added MOCVDs would reach 250 this year. He also shed light on Lumileds future market strategy following Go Scale Capital investment.

It’s finally possible to learn Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune or play pop hits such as See You Again by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth by following LED lights on The One Smart Piano.

A lot has happened in the field of automotive lighting in recent years. Modern technologies such as LED, OLED and laser are very much on the advance. Richard Lothholz, Global Head of Sales Automotive Lamps and LED at OSRAM, answers questions about the development of automotive lighting technology.

LED market underperformed in 2Q15, due to waning backlight market during the quarter and cutthroat pricing competition in the lighting market, a CNA report cited Epistar Chairman B.J. Lee saying.

The LED industry market competition has intensified leading to price plunges, and even some LED lighting manufacturers releasing low priced products that have been given the “cabbage price” nickname, reported Chinese LED website Grand Lighting (Dazhaoming). Prices of international LED manufacturers mid to high range LED products remain high, creating a huge price difference.

Philips’ Hue will be seamlessly integrated with ABB’s i-Jia, a smart home control system, to give Chinese consumers an amazing connected lighting experience and further the adoption of smart homes in China.

Saffron aims to bring Silk, a smart LED bulb capable of color tuning to people’s circadian rhythm throughout the day onto the market by January 2016.

Osram was not only acting as an industry partner at the fifth tour of the largest electric vehicle rally in the world, the WAVE (World Advanced Vehicle Expedition), but also mingling amongst the competitors with a car fitted with OSRAM products. WAVE 2015 took place from 12 to 21 June, with a route over several locations from Plauen in Germany to St. Gallen in Switzerland.

A court in The Hague has made an unprecedented ruling and ordered the Dutch government to cut carbon emissions by at least 25% within five years, reported The Guardian.

Market competition in the North American bulb market has pressured Cree to restructure its LED business, said Roger Chu, Director, Research Division, LEDinside.

LG and Google have recently formed a joint marketing campaign to promote OLED TVs, reported The Korea Times.

A recent report from BMW Blog has quashed rumors that the laser headlights would be arriving in the U.S. market by fall this year.

Through its Transportation Lighting and Safety program, the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is evaluating the potential for new lighting technologies and approaches to improve driving safety at night, including new car headlight systems. For the study, vehicle manufacturer Audi AG has provided the LRC with an A7 equipped with adaptive high beam “matrix lights” that allow drivers to benefit from using high beams all the time while selectively dimming a portion of the beam in the direction of other drivers to prevent glare. In the Audi system, the beam pattern is split into numerous individual LEDs arranged in a grid or “matrix” that adapts to the surroundings in real-time. The lighting system is being evaluated by LRC researchers this June.

Exagan, a start-up innovator of gallium-nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology that enables smaller and more efficient electrical converters,announced it has raised €5.7 million (US $6.38 million) in first-round financing that will be used to produce high-speed power switching devices on 200mm wafers.

Transphorm, an early stage semiconductor company focused on redefining power conversion, today announced a US $70 million investment round led by global investment firm KKR. KKR’s investment follows initial rounds of funding led by funds affiliated with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, Soros Quantum Strategic Partners, INCJ, Fujitsu, Transphorm will use this funding to support its growth, product innovation and expansion.

Adoption of LED automotive lights has grown over recent years, but traditional halogen and Xenon HID lights still dominate the headlight market, said the company CEO Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre during an exclusive interview with LEDinside at Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition (GILE), China from June 9-12, 2015.

Top Taiwanese LED chip manufacturer Epistar has been aggressive in its patent strategies, and has acquired key LED filament bulb patents to build up its core advantages, reported Liberty Times recently.

Osram is making further progress regarding its realignment. In an extraordinary meeting, the supervisory board of OSRAM Licht AG approved the carve-out of the general lighting lamps business. As an independent entity, the business will be able to operate more freely on the market and realize strategic options, such as partnerships, more easily. Jes Munk Hansen, until now CEO of the Americas region, will lead the lamps business in the future. "Today's supervisory board decision lays the foundation for our strategic orientation toward growth, innovation and technology leadership," said Olaf Berlien, Chief Executive Officer of OSRAM Licht AG.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) Lighting Systems Division published Temporal Light Artifacts (Flicker and Stroboscopic Effects), a position paper on temporal light artifacts (TLAs) that addresses what is commonly referred to as flicker and stroboscopic effects.

Litecool (//www.litecool.co.uk), has opened a new clean room facility to research, develop, prototype and test new LED packaging technologies. The laboratory includes all the equipment needed to mount bare LEDs into packages, COBs and arrays. This will speed up time to market for new packaging technologies from Litecool.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) published LE 6-2014 Procedure for Determining Target Efficacy Ratings for Commercial, Industrial, and Residential Luminaires. It was updated to explicitly include LED (light-emitting diode) technology and is of particular interest to recessed luminaire manufacturers, fluorescent lamp manufacturers, and HID (high intensity discharge) manufacturers.

Illumitex, announced the addition of Paul Hardej and Mathieu van de Sande to its team of horticulture lighting experts.

A newly published study from the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that improving the uniformity of lighting in parking lots can increase the sense of safety and security, as well as provide up to an additional 75% energy savings by lowering total light levels.

A floating LED light bulb has made possible by a Swedish designer Simon Morris by using magnetic designs.

Major advances in the field of organic electronics are currently revolutionising previously silicon-dominated semiconductor technology. Customised organic molecules enable the production of lightweight, mechanically flexible electronic components that are perfectly adapted to individual applications. Chemists at the Goethe University have now developed a new class of organic luminescent materials through the targeted introduction of boron atoms into the molecular structures. The compounds described in the professional journal "Angewandte Chemie" (Applied Chemistry) feature an intensive blue fluorescence and are therefore of interest for use in OLEDs.

The Alliance for Solid-State Illumination Systems and Technologies (ASSIST), a program of the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has released a publication that proposes a new method of evaluating human perception of directly observed light source flicker. The publication, ASSIST recommends…Recommended Metric for Assessing the Direct Perception of Light Source Flicker, provides specific measurement procedures and calculations to objectively determine whether the amount of flicker from a light source is above or below the threshold of human perception. The metric is applicable to any waveform shape and frequency and is based on peer-reviewed laboratory and human factors experiments.

Photos of a new HTC smartphone model featuring three LED flash lights have been leaked on Chinese media Weibo recently, reported CNMO.com.

India’s Power Minister Piyush Goyal announced a massive LED upgrade program in the Northern holy city Varanasi, which is located in the State Uttar Pradesh, according to The Hindu and other media reports.

As a result of government regulations over the past several decades, an increasing number of product manufacturers have added labels alerting consumers to potential health risks. However, a new labeling initiative isn’t the result of a federal mandate but a technology leader’s decision to take action.

DuPont Displays (DuPont) and leading inkjet equipment manufacturerKateeva announced today that they will join forces to develop optimized inks, equipment, and processes to further advance inkjet printing technology for Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display devices.  The companies will work closely to leverage DuPont technical leadership in solution materials for printed OLED devices with Kateeva’s exclusive YIELDjet™ inkjet printing platform.  The aim of this cooperation is to establish a proven, cohesive offering for OLED device manufacturers that enables a simpler yet highly effective process for manufacturing OLED TV displays using inkjet technology.