LED lighting revenues reached 10% of Royal Philips Electronics' revenues for overall lighting products in the fourth quarter of 2009, and with increasing demand in 2010, the company expects LED lighting revenues to reach 15% of its total lighting revenues for 2010 and over 20% in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Philips indicated that the company will focus on developing LED lighting and aims to reach 50% of its total lighting revenues in 2015.

Philips Taiwan president Edward Po noted that LEDs are fast taking over the lighting market from traditional devices. Due to its longer product life than regular energy-saving light bulbs' 2-3 years, LED light bulbs can last for up to 40,000 hours, which is about 15 years. Because of LED devices' long product life, overall unit shipments for light-source products will decrease, but overall lighting industry value will increase through shipments of higher-value customized LED lighting products, Po added.

Setting up an LED lighting system needs to combine multiple technologies from software to hardware such as user interface, light control, signal transmission and conversion, and product design. In the past few years, Philips has been developing the LED lighting market by conducting technology R&D and mergers, emphasizing patent value and raising brand recognition. Philips has acquired lighting equipment vendors PLI and Genlyte, as well as players in the automation control system sector, Po said.

According to Digitimes Research, high brightness LED use will increase at a CAGR of 28.6% from 2009-2013, with a CAGR of 62.6% for large-size display backlighting and 97.4% for LED lighting.

Despite the increasing revenue share of LED lighting in Philips' overall lighting revenues, Philips will further advance its technology and devise more active marketing strategy to boost LEDs' share of the total lighting revenues to 50% in 2015 and 75% in 2020, Po added.