In its new report “Markets for Smart Lighting Driver, Controller and Sensor Chips“, NanoMarkets estimates that the market for smart lighting chips will be about $530 million by 2018, growing to $1.3 billion by 2020.
This report analyzes and forecasts opportunities for chipmakers in LED drivers, MCUs and sensors for smart lighting. Smart lighting includes systems providing high levels of energy efficiency, color tuning capabilities and/or visible light communications.
From the Report:
As the LED backlighting market slows, LED driver firms will shift their attention to the growing smart lighting market. New types of value-added LED drivers are expected to emerge to meet the needs of smart lighting, including many with embedded sensors and MCUs. Sales of LED drivers for smart lighting systems are expected to reach $255 million by 2018, growing to $595 million by 2020.
Despite this growth, LED driver chips for energy efficient lighting will commoditize quickly. Chipmakers will then turn their attention to color-tunable lighting for improved mood, health and job performance. Here there is still considerable opportunity to designing innovative chips enabling cool-to-warm adjustment and the ability to cycle through a range of colors. Chips consumed by color tuning smart lighting systems will reach almost $435 million by the end of the forecast period considered in this report. Future light tuning chips for lighting systems will also be built around a new generation of LED microarrays
The opportunities for selling wireless sensors into smart lighting systems are also increasing and should produce revenues close to $200 million by 2018.
NanoMarkets is seeing a growing interest from smart lighting firms in ZigBee chips embody the ZigBee Light Link Protocol. A new attraction for lighting makers is the recently ratified ZigBee IP standard which provides a secure frame for complex energy management networks, including lighting systems. NanoMarkets also expects to see the sensors for lighting systems using the EnOcean energy harvesting technology now that this is an international standard. EnOcean standards have already been designed into light switches and occupancy sensors.
