When it comes to intelligent lighting, people may think of switching the brightness and color of the light at any time according to different scenarios to meet the different needs of users. Nowadays, the application of intelligent lighting is extended further, and it can also control the light rhythm according to the biological rhythm of the human body, the response curve of the light environment and the demand effect of different scenes, and it can be linked with other equipment in the whole house.
According to the Foresight Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's smart lighting industry will reach 43.1 billion yuan in 2022, with an annual growth rate of about 23%, and the market has great potential for explosion. At present, in addition to traditional lighting companies such as Op Lighting, Sunshine Lighting, and Foshan Lighting, they are stepping up the deployment of intelligent lighting and taking the lead in the development of the commanding heights. Players and capital from different fields such as Xiaomi, Huawei, and Meizu have also joined. Some insiders said that smart products are not an inevitable development trend of the traditional lighting industry. Different companies combine their own conditions and choose suitable market segments, which will be a better development idea.
1. Lighting companies in Zhongshan and Shenzhen account for 70% of the province
With the development of the lighting industry for many years, the national LED industry has formed five major regions: the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Rim, the Fujian and Jiangxi regions, and the central and western regions. Among them, these five regions account for more than 90% of the LED companies in the country, and basically form a relatively complete LED industry system from upstream chips, epitaxy, midstream packaging to downstream applications, and relying on the construction of the national LED industry base. Distinctive industrial clusters.
According to the data of the professional version of Tianyancha, in 2020, there will be 9,973 registered enterprises in Guangdong province, with an annual registered growth rate of 14.14%. As of March 10, more than 80,000 enterprises in the province have met the "lighting lamps" corporate standards in emerging industries. Among them, Zhongshan City leads the province with more than 32,000 (40.58%), and Shenzhen has 26,000. With more than (33.32%) lighting companies, the two cities account for more than 70% of the province's share. Guangzhou ranks third with 5,838 (7.25%) lighting companies.
In recent years, driven by technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, the traditional lighting based on tungsten filament lamps and gas discharge lamps in the past, to LED lighting based on semiconductor devices, has gradually moved towards an Internet of Things The era of smart lighting. IDC released the forecast of China's smart home market in 2021. By 2021, China's smart lighting growth rate will exceed 90%. According to data from the Advanced Industry Research LED Research Institute (GGII), the total scale of China's LED smart lighting market will reach 46.6 billion yuan in 2021, of which indoor smart lighting is expected to be 27.3 billion yuan, and outdoor smart lighting is expected to be 19.3 billion yuan.
Facing the promising smart lighting market, traditional lighting manufacturers such as Op Lighting, Sunshine Lighting, and Foshan Lighting have deployed one after another to occupy the commanding heights of development. Last year, Foshan Lighting strengthened the development and promotion of smart lighting products, and cooperated with Alibaba (Tmall Elf Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), Huawei (Hilink), Baidu (Xiaodu), etc. to develop smart home lighting products; January 18, 2021 On Japan, Op Lighting launched the South China Park project, claiming to build the new South China Park into a national smart manufacturing demonstration base and a highland for smart product research and development.
2. There are many obstacles to the transformation of traditional lighting
For lighting companies, the deployment of smart lighting means that it can bring more considerable income. The data shows that the global bulk delivery price of bulbs is about US$0.4, while the price of intelligent LED lights is more than US$2.5. More importantly, many people in the industry mentioned that with smart lighting as the starting point, traditional lighting companies can continue to expand their market areas and business boundaries while entering the field of smart homes.
So, entering the smart lighting market will be an inevitable trend in the development of traditional lighting companies? In this regard, Liang Jiehui, director of Foshan Lighting E-commerce Business Center, gave a different view when interviewed by reporters, "The current development prospects of the smart lighting market It is very imaginative, but the process requires product iteration and market education. It is necessary to actively understand and make smart products that meet customer needs, rather than just voice control pseudo smart products. I think smart products are a good one Trend, but not the inevitable development trend of the traditional lighting industry, because the field of lighting is very large, and different companies combine their own conditions to choose suitable market segments, which is also a better development idea." Liang Jiehui said.
It is worth mentioning that the deployment of traditional lighting companies in the smart lighting market also needs to consider many practical factors. Traditional lighting companies are good at industrial design and manufacturing. In addition to hardware facilities, smart lighting also requires cloud platforms, APP control, system updates and iterations, and safety guarantees. This is precisely where traditional lighting companies have shortcomings. From the perspective of corporate operations, lighting companies must also take into account aspects such as strategy formulation, organizational structure, corporate culture, etc., to meet the needs of transformation and development in a timely manner. "Uncertainty is the biggest problem. The uncertainty of intelligent platforms, the uncertainty of product development, the uncertainty of the docking method... These series of uncertain factors are testing the comprehensive strength of the enterprise. Intelligent lighting is an important issue. A new and good track, as long as the company can run out of these many uncertain factors, it may become a new leader. This is like QQ in the PC era and WeChat in the mobile era." Liang Jiehui said.
Third, take advantage of the mature platform to move towards intelligent transformation
At present, smart lighting products are mainly distributed in four major areas: industrial and commercial, residential and household, outdoor lighting and public lighting. TrendForce’s latest report "2021 Global LED Lighting Market Report-Lighting-Level Packaging and Lighting Product Trends (1H21)" pointed out that in the field of smart home lighting, in response to the development of the smart home market, especially in the high-end residential market, the overall growth of this sector The demand for smart lighting, coupled with the accelerated penetration of smart lighting products by the epidemic, will be the market with the highest growth rate in 2020, with an annual growth rate of 27%.
Although smart lighting is growing rapidly in the residential and home furnishing sectors, the current market recognition is not high. According to a data report released by iiMedia Consulting, among the smart home products, the interviewed netizens have the highest awareness of smart TVs (42.6%), but have a low understanding of products embedded in systems such as smart surveillance and smart lighting. The recognition of smart lighting accounts for only 13.5%.
In addition, most of the current smart home products are single-product intelligence or single-system intelligence, and it is difficult to achieve common interconnection at the level of the entire smart home system to provide consumers with a better user experience. Under the combined influence of these factors, smart home lighting products are facing many difficulties in market promotion and popularization.
Liang Jiehui mentioned, "Current smart home lighting products are more transitional products. For individual users, many products on the market are not very friendly in terms of selection, installation, network distribution, and use. So now The penetration rate of the product is relatively low. In addition, users who currently choose to use smart home lighting are basically hardcore smart product enthusiasts. Therefore, if the product can actively understand customer needs and is easy to install and use, smart lighting products It is possible to really explode."
For market promotion and popularization, channels are also an important factor. Traditional lighting products are mainly sold in offline channels, but now users are becoming more and more accustomed to buying products online, especially under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic last year. According to industry insiders, two different sales channels, online and offline, have their own advantages and disadvantages, with strong offline experience and low traffic, and strong online traffic with low experience. In the future, online and offline may be integrated to achieve true O2O. Prior to this, traditional lighting companies may wish to cut into smart products through mature platforms in the early stage. In addition to having a good boost to the intelligent transformation of enterprises, the risk will also be relatively low.