Automotive LED market forecast to reach $3.51 billion in 2021

20 Dec 2021

Market analyst TrendForce identifies ams-Osram, Nichia, and Lumileds as top three vendors by revenues.

The global penetration rate of LED vehicle headlights exceeds 60% in 2021 with penetration in new energy vehicles (NEV) exceeding 90%, according to the latest market analysis by market intelligence company TrendForce.

Influenced by growth momentum from increasing automotive market shipments and the rising penetration rate of LED lighting, global automotive LED market value is estimated to be $3.51 billion in 2021, a 31.8% YoY growth rate. Trendforce concludes that this demonstrates that “LED headlights and automotive display LED products remain the main driving force for growth in the automotive LED market.”

Although the automotive semiconductor shortage has led to manufacturing bottlenecks among some car manufacturers, since car manufacturers have asked LED producers to continue production, the purchase order status of major automotive LED manufacturers will not be affected before the end of 2021.

‘Big three’ retain lion’s share

Among the 2021 revenue rankings of automotive LED manufacturers, the top three companies remain ams-Osram, Nichia, and Lumileds. These three account for a combined market share of as much as 71.7%, says Trendforce. In terms of automotive lighting, ams Osram has leveraged stable product quality, excellent lighting efficiency, and cost performance to make it the supplier of choice for the world’s high-end cars and new energy vehicles, including high-flying Tesla among its customers.

During 2021, ams-Osram’s automotive LED revenue grew rapidly and has an opportunity to reach $1.304 billion by year’s end for an annual growth rate of approximately 40.9%. Samsung LED’s PixCell LED has also been successfully integrated into the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, boosting its automotive LED revenue growth to as much as $121 million with market share expected to increase to 3.4%.

In terms of automotive display backlighting including dashboard and central console displays, not only are more and more car models equipped with automotive display products, the standard is moving towards larger displays with the current mainstream automotive panel product size at 12.3in (312mm).

Further taking into account features popular in the current market such as HDR, local dimming, and wide color gamut shows that automotive LED market demand will maintain a rapid growth trend in the next five years. This will benefit the revenues of Nichia and Stanley with this year’s market share (2021) for these two companies expected to reach 23.1% and 6.6%, respectively.

Relying on the high brightness and compact size of its WICOP product, Seoul Semiconductor’s penetration rate of the automotive headlight market has reached 10% and WICOP has been adopted by car manufacturers including Changan Automobile, SAIC-GM-Wuling, and Nio.

Revenue is forecast to reach $155 million with a market share of approximately 4.4%. Trendforce commented, “It is worth mentioning, benefiting from European customer orders, Dominant has the highest annual revenue growth out of the top ten companies in the industry at 46.3%.”

ams Osram launches ‘brightest’ LED for auto front lighting

Coincident with the Trendforce report, ams Osram has unveiled what it calls “the brightest LED currently available on the market for automotive front lighting. The leadframe-based components offer market-leading brightness specially developed for use in low beam and high beam solutions in cars.

The Oslon Black Flat X is currently the brightest LED available on the market for standard low and high beam solutions for automotive front lighting. The picture shows the 2-chip version of the component.

“The Oslon Black Flat product family has been an ideal solution for high-quality and at the same time cost-optimized headlamp designs for many years,” said Philipp Puchinger, Marketing Manager Automotive Exterior at ams Osram. “With the two new products in the Oslon Black Flat X line, ams Osram is once again underlining its innovation leadership in automotive lighting.”

The surface-mountable components can be processed particularly easily in manufacturers' standardized production processes. In addition to the market-leading brightness of typ. 460 lm at 1 A, the 1-chip variant is characterized by its compact dimensions of 3.75 mm x 3.75 mm.

The special QFN platform of the LEDs enables customers to perform particularly simple thermal management. Depending on the system, heat sinks can be significantly reduced in size or even eliminated altogether.

The Oslon Black Flat X family’s leadframe package also achieves a lower thermal resistance (Rth) than the leading ceramic packages in this context to date. Together with a special TiO2 encapsulation, the black package of the LEDs delivers high contrasts of 1:200. In addition, the new components are characterized by a very homogenic color over angle radiation. The Oslon Black Flat X family will start with a 1- and a 2-chip version. Various multi-chip versions will be added in mid-2022.