Philips announced that it has reached an agreement to buy Italy-based Ilti Luce Srl, one of the leading LED design companies in Europe for architectural indoor lighting. Ilti Luce will become part of the Professional Luminaires business within the Philips Lighting sector.

The winners of the first annual Next Generation Luminaires(tm) competition have been disclosed at Strategies in Light conference(SIL) in Santa Clara, California, February 18-20, 2009. The awards recognize excellence in the design of energy-efficient LED luminaires for general illumination, using white light in commercial lighting applications.

Royal Philips Electronics let the Titan Crane in Clydebank, Scotland more striking visual display at night. This great icon to the River Clyde’s shipbuilding heritage has been fittingly restored after a £3m redevelopment plan to transform it into a unique exhibition and visitor center. The two-year restoration project was carried out by urban regeneration company, Clydebank Re-built, whose vision also included a spectacular lighting design to show off this historic landmark to full effect.

NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, has launched the world’s first integrated dimmable mains LED driver - the SSL2101, and has demonstrated it on the NXP booth at the Strategies in Light Conference(SIL) form February 18 – 20 at Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, USA.

Future Lighting Solutions announced the availability of its first off-the-shelf optic for uniform mixing of multiple LED light sources. The company says Polymer Optic's 230 Color Mixer Reflector can uniformly mix light from up to four closely mounted Luxeon Rebel LEDs (from Philips) into a single +/- 5 degree full width at half maximum (FWHM) beam.

It’s reported that French Center for Building Science and Technology (CSTB), major French academic lighting laboratories and the French branch of Philips Lighting has formed a R&D program to research and promote the optimal use of LEDs in buildings.  

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. is reportedly setting up a 50-50 joint venture with its affiliate Samsung Electro-Mechanics to jointly produce LEDs. It’s disclosed the veture is tentatively named Samsung LED. LEDs are known to have many advantages to traditional light sources, such as low energy consumption, longer lifetime, which are increasingly used in products from mobile phones to flat-screen televisions.

Royal Philips Electronics announces that it will launch a new solar-powered reading light in autumn 2009. The company says the LED light enables people to both read and write after dark. It’s disclosed that Philips’s “My Reading Light” was developed specifically for the education sector in Africa and will allow school children to continue with their homework after sunset.

It’s reported that Philips has plans to manufacture LEDs lighting products in India in future. Philips, the largest player in the Indian lighting market, also intends to enhance the production capacity of its compact fluorescent light (CFL) plant based in Mohali (Punjab) by 50-60% by 2010.

Philips Lumileds has launched a free online tool that makes it easier for manufacturers of LED-based luminaires to show compliance with ENERGY STAR® standards. The new tool addresses the requirements of the “Chromaticity and Spatial Uniformity” test in the ENERGY STAR® specification for LED lighting that requires the beam of light to appear the same color to the human eye, regardless of which area of the beam the viewer looks at or where they are at in relation to the light source.

Raymond James Stadium, Tampa's host venue for the Super Bowl, has been temporarily illuminated with state-of-the-art LED technology as part of a city-wide beautification effort for the championship game on February 1. Philips/Color Kinetics is helping illuminate the stadium from dusk to dawn with the newly launched ColorReach™ Powercore, one of the biggest, brightest exterior LED's in the world.

Due to short-term market demand and uncertain outlook, Royal Philips Electronics has announced that it will impair the book value of its Lumileds business by EUR 232 million (approximately $305 million). During the company’s investor and analyst day, this move was initially indicated. Philips said the value adjustment was a consequence of reduced short-term market demand and uncertain outlook caused by the current macro economic downturn.

The incandescent bulb is about to become obsolete is lost on the vast majority of the public. The phase-out begins in three years as part of the energy bill signed in 2007. They will be edged out by LEDs. So light bulb makers have to revamp some plants, shutter others, and invest enormous sums of money in preparation for a technological shift.

The 14th annual Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition to be held June 9-12, 2009 at the China Import and Export Fair, Pazhou Complex, in Guangzhou, China, is adding a second LED exhibit hall this year. The LED booths were very popular last year, perhaps due in part to complement the growing interest in the China LED market in China.

Philips will showcase its latest solid-state lighting systems at ARC 2009. The lighting solutions featured combine the many advantages of LEDs with proprietary technologies to generate millions of colors, high-quality white light, and customizable lighting effects without the cost and complexities of some traditional lighting methods.

Cree Inc. announced that it will supply more than 4,200 recessed LED fixtures for part of the Pentagon called Wedge 5. According to Cree, The LEDs are expected to use 22 percent less power than the fluorescent lights they will replace, enough to pay back their extra cost in four years. Cree would not disclose details of the Pentagon contract — it’s part of a long line of government deals for Cree dating back to the company’s founding — but the company said the fixtures retail for about $380 apiece.  

It’s reported that Sven Rotgers has joined GE Lighting as Business Development Manager for Specification Lamps to head up the company’s Specification team covering the UK, Nordics and Ireland. Sven joins GE Lighting from Philips where he has worked for the last eight years. At GE he will be responsible for leading his sales team to create new and maintain existing partnerships with customers specifying GE lamps. About GE Lighting

Everything else in the economy may be shrinking, but there's one thing that's getting bigger: the ball that drops on New Year's Eve, according to a recent report.

Taiwan LED lighting makers estimate LED market to take off in 2009 in spite of the ongoing financial crisis. In Taiwan, several significant LED lighting projects have launched by governments. The Taichung City government installed 5,000 streetlights by the end of October, the largest number of all. The Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs has announced it will budget NT$150 million (US$4.5 million at US$1:NT$33) in 2009 to finance local governments on the island to erect a total number of 12,500 LED streetlights islandwide.

Recently, Nuventix, Inc., creator of SynJet® technology cooling solutions, its innovative LED cooling design for lighting giant and Nuventix design partner, Philips wins the Austin Business Journal’s Tech Innovations Award. The Nuventix product is an active thermal management solution utilizing SynJet fanless air cooling technology providing silent operation, long life, and optimal cooling for the Philips Downlight LED Module (DLM) line of products.

The three-acre North Dumpling Island off the coast of Connecticut, an independent state is reportedly that installs Philips’s LED lighting system.      

General Electric has decided to end all plans for revitalizing their century-old incandescent bulbs. Instead, it plans to focus on LEDs and OLEDs.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors and BASF have developed a highly efficient white organic light-emitting diode (OLED). This is for the first time that an OLED not only is able to achieve a light yield of more than 60 lm/W, but also meets the international Energy Star SSL Standard with regard to color requirements.  

Recently, Lighting Science Group Corporation (LSG), announced that it has designed, developed and produced an integrated lighting system for the 2009 Time Square New Year's Eve Ball. The Ball, which boasts a system comprised of 672 LED modules, will be installed on November 26 in Times Square, New York, where it will continue to remain year round.

It’s reported that the use of LED backlights in LCD TVs will start to grow rapidly from 2009 as TV makers introduce slimmer models.

It’s reported that there is an article “2008 Tour of Homes” demonstration of LED residential downlights and undercabinet lights, shows an overview of project results including significant energy savings, improved illuminance uniformity and positive user feedback.

It’s reported that Philips has announced that, in the UK, it intends to re-focus its professional indoor luminaire activities to LED-based solutions. The company believes it will streamline its UK organisation so that LED growth will be further accelerated.

Some consumers are starting to switch their regular household halogen or incandescent light bulbs to LED technology. Up until now, LEDs have typically been used more in professional applications, but they are beginning to increase in popularity as a household lighting solution.

Recently, Irish company Nualight, which specializes in LED-based food display illumination, has announced its selection by leading retailer Tesco in a EUR1million deal to implement its energy-saving LED lighting product in Tesco Ireland’s stores.

OLEDs are beginning to be used in TVs and cell phone displays, and big names such as Siemens and Philips are throwing their weight behind the technology to make it a lighting source as well. The OLED printer was made by General Electric Co. on its sprawling research campus here in upstate New York. It's not far from where a GE physicist figured out a practical way to use tungsten metal as the filament in a regular light bulb. That's still used today, nearly a century later.