Where is the lighting industry heading in 2025? Expert Forecasts | Annual Review (15)

There are three 'ones' for the upcoming 2025 lighting industry.

1. Not enough optimism . Changes in the global economic pattern are anti-globalization, shifting from efficiency and profitability first to national security and domestic employment first. Especially with Trump's new government, full of "hawks", to break away from China's supply chain, it will continue to suppress our country. The recession in the EU economy will also have an adverse effect on exports; opening up new markets takes time, and there is still a gap compared to Europe and the US.

2. A positive expectation . To promote domestic circulation, the Central Economic Work Conference held this year proposed "counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical regulation, maintaining ample liquidity; vigorously boosting consumption, implementing special actions to boost consumption; promoting new urbanization and comprehensive rural revitalization; creating a healthy development environment for green and low-carbon industries," and a series of measures. Funds are not invested in the manufacturing end but directly given to the consumption end, resulting in phenomena such as "national subsidies" being sold out in seconds and the popularity of "housing vouchers" in Nanjing. Domestic consumption is worth looking forward to.

3. A key focus area . Artificial intelligence has brought a new technological cycle, with impacts that are all-encompassing. Unlike previous technological revolutions, it affects many industries in a non-progressive manner. With the addition of Huawei's autonomous driving, automotive intelligence, and other technologies, traditional automobile manufacturing enterprises have been impacted, bringing new opportunities, including the rapid development of China's automotive lighting industry. Recently, OpenAI's o3 beta version was announced, covering a wide range of fields, with reasoning speed far surpassing humans, and analysis and reasoning capabilities exceeding 99.9% of ordinary people, reaching the level of 0.1%-1% of human综合能力。AI will greatly accelerate the development of scientific and technological fields such as biomedicine, providing longer lifespans for people. We should pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence.

Wishing China's economy in 2025 to be as agile and dancing like a golden snake!

There are still opportunities in 2025; the market remains huge, and mid-to-low-end products remain highly competitive.

In terms of lighting testing instruments and equipment, the market share of future domestic Chinese equipment both domestically and internationally will continue to expand. Even markets with the highest requirements, such as those in the United States and Germany, will open wider doors for high-quality Chinese instruments and equipment.

In 2025, lighting enterprises should adjust their strategies in the following ways to adapt to market changes and challenges:

1. Closely follow policy empowerment . Focus on national policies and development strategies, excavate advantages and core competitiveness accumulated over many years, actively layout the upstream and downstream of the industry / supply chain relying on domestic demand to boost growth, understand the development direction of important transformation fields such as smart cities, new urbanization integration, rural revitalization, urban renewal, low-altitude economy, new energy, and smart homes, and find your own positioning from them to make correct strategic decisions.

2. Optimize product structure . Focus on key elements such as low carbon, smart, and healthy attributes; increase R&D investment; leverage technologies like AI and IoT to enhance product intelligence, greenness, personalization, and flexibility; create signature products with 'professionalism, refinement, specialization, and innovation'; simultaneously harness digital capabilities to reduce costs and improve efficiency, develop more new products meeting market demands, and boost corporate core competitiveness and brand influence.

3. Innovate marketing models . Focus on the marketing service ecosystem, monitor changes in domestic and international market environments, lead with services, experiences, and overall solutions, build a new 'manufacturing + service' business format, strengthen brand building, expand sales channels, and improve corporate awareness and market share.

Currently, I believe the worst period is gradually passing. With the national government beginning comprehensive stimulus for domestic demand and the economy, lighting enterprises should focus on the above three aspects, adapt promptly to market changes and challenges, grasp the trend of digitalization, networking, and intelligence development, take technological innovation as the primary driving force, and step into the hopeful year 2025 with a brand-new attitude.

In 2025, from the perspective of products and services, I personally believe there are two major directions: the product direction of 'decorative lighting becoming functional lighting, functional lighting becoming decorative lighting, and intelligent functionality' and the distribution/consumption service direction of 'sales solutions, customized demand, and full-case services'.

AIGC and new AI technologies will also be widely utilized in enterprise production and management. The artisticization and intelligence of lighting products will become the mainstream for smart home lighting; retro styles of decorative lamps will see an upward trend—simple retro styles such as European, American, French, Italian, etc., will also become a refreshing current in decorative lamps, bringing new vitality; with the global expansion of Eastern culture, decorative lamps with the concept of New Chinese Style will also achieve new breakthroughs, innovating towards the design direction of 'Simple (concise), Beautiful (form beauty), Light (lightweight), Meaningful (artistic conception)', and are expected to go global along with cultural export. In 2025, under the incentive of major favorable policies such as 'vigorously boosting consumption, improving investment efficiency, and comprehensively expanding domestic demand', the lighting market will welcome greater development opportunities.

Ni Qiang

Chairman of Hengdian Group Dephen Lighting Co., Ltd.

I predict that in 2025, competition in the lighting industry will intensify further , and production capacity will be further cleared out. Once supply and demand tend to balance, the market will stabilize. I look forward to the industry stopping malicious competition (especially among top brands), maintaining a reasonable average profit margin for the industry, leading the healthy development of the lighting industry, and avoiding the displacement of quality products by inferior ones.

As the global political and business landscape becomes clearer, expanding production capacity overseas and localizing overseas markets will be an unavoidable path for lighting enterprises. It is recommended that enterprises with needs further investigate transferable regions and methods to be prepared for any eventuality.

I have always firmly believed that the future of the lighting industry will be led by IoT enterprises whose main business is lighting, driven by 'AIoT + Environmental Protection + Health' to achieve double-digit compound annual growth rates. Combined with sensor-driven adaptive smart lighting systems, this will gradually become a rigid demand and give rise to a new generation of leading enterprises. Currently and in the foreseeable short term, no definitive demonstrative technical architecture or discourse has been seen from leading enterprises in smart lighting, which seems to offer opportunities for countless domestic and international companies: let us see who will reign supreme in the era of IoT lighting!

In 2025, uncertainty in the external environment will continue to exist. Traditional large-scale lighting regional demand is unstable, but overseas emerging markets still have significant potential for imagination. Domestic demand is insufficient, the number of companies going global is increasing sharply, and overcapacity will persist. Lighting is a rigid-demand industry; as manufacturing rises in some emerging regions globally, localized overseas manufacturing is beginning to compete with Chinese lighting enterprises. A stable and sustainable lighting industry ecosystem requires differentiated, innovative technologies and products, rather than remaining stuck in price competition. At the same time, reliable products and good brand reputation also help domestic lighting enterprises enter overseas high-end markets.

We call on industry peers to have long-term planning. We should not rely solely on price wars that drain the pond, nor should we extend domestic competitive habits to overseas markets. Instead, we must compete with international lighting companies through more innovative products and superior quality.

I predict that 2025 will still be a highly challenging year. From the demand side, there are no significant signs of recovery, while from the supply side, there is still overcapacity and vicious price competition . Additionally, after Trump takes office, new US strategies towards China may cause our enterprises to change their past investment directions. It is also possible that new policies could prevent effective returns on overseas investments made by enterprises in recent years, bringing huge financial pressure to these companies. Of course, 'going global' is an inevitable path for enterprises, but companies must not only fully interpret trade policies but also thoroughly evaluate and research the suitability, rationality, and sustainability of the destination for going global. They must also understand local customs, religious culture, personnel, finance and taxation, legal affairs, customs affairs, and many other factors.

In addition, enterprises should not only consider overseas markets; the domestic market also has great potential. With China's economic rise, the younger generation will bring huge high-quality, healthy, multi-functional, and aesthetically designed lighting brands and products. Meanwhile, China's developed online channels and the establishment of internet consumption habits also provide new enterprises and new brands with excellent opportunities to replace traditional channels. Therefore, it is advisable to try and layout the domestic market in advance.

Li Zhipeng

Director and General Manager of Foshan Nanhai Maoyu Lighting Co., Ltd.

Intelligence and connectivity are the next stop for LED lighting. AI may accelerate this process, so there will be significant breakthroughs and development in the field of smart lighting. Once technical bottlenecks are broken, a new generation of lighting forces will emerge to form a new ecosystem, gradually building an industry gradient for lighting. Currently, companies with both capability and willingness are actively positioning themselves in this field, including upstream components and downstream market clients and smart application scenarios.

I believe that the trend of the LED optoelectronic semiconductor industry is:

LED can not only be used in the lighting field, but also shine in other optoelectronic fields. Current investment in Mini/Micro LED continues, and it will become the next core technology in the display field in the future. VCSELlaser devices have many innovative applications on electronic products such as mobile phones/tablets. The quantum efficiency of UV LED is rapidly increasing, and it will gradually replace traditional technologies in the health field in the future. Optoelectronic technology has many applications and breakthroughs in the fields of biomedicine and medical aesthetics. This requires both enterprise exploration and support and guidance from the industry and even the government.