LED Industry Insiders on Smart Lighting: Waiting for an Explosive Breakthrough During a Lull

Dou Linping, Secretary-General of the China Illuminating Engineering Society, stated in an interview with Xinhua Net that the intelligentization of lighting may change the existing model. For lighting systems, previous intelligentization or digitization was mostly connected through wires, but future smart lighting requires continuous innovation in models. This requires the use of Internet technologies, achieving smart control of the entire lighting environment through wireless means such as WiFi, infrared, and Bluetooth. Technological progress will continuously enhance consumers' new demands for lighting.

Smart lighting has been a hot topic in the industry. In the minds of LED industry leaders, has the golden era of smart lighting arrived? Several senior industry professionals have shared their views on this.

Anhui Meidu International Lighting Chairman Jin Kai

Smart lighting has not been effective in promotion on the lighting market, mainly due to expensive product prices and limited technology applications.

For a long time, many electrical companies have been promoting smart lighting, such as Haoyi, Honeywell Langneng, Futian, etc., but they are still at the stage of publicity, with very few actual products. Distributors will not stock such products, so smart lighting is still more of a concept at this stage. However, in my view, in the future, smart lighting will be widely popularized, and its development prospects are promising.

It is relatively easy for companies like Xiaomi, BYD, and Haier to develop smart lighting, because they have brand awareness. As long as they enrich their product categories and combine existing products such as mobile phones and TVs to enter the lighting terminal market, it is an easy task. I am quite optimistic about this.

Smart lighting threshold is too high

Liu Qian, General Manager of Guizhou Ansen Lighting

In recent years, the concept of "smart lighting" has been hyped heavily, but its application in end-user markets has remained in a state of slow development, influenced by various factors including consumer awareness, market environment, product pricing, promotional efforts, and market penetration. Currently, the most common "smart products" in the end-user market are lighting fixtures with adjustable brightness and color temperature. Average consumers do not yet have a clear awareness of smart lighting, and its high price gives them pause.

Currently, domestic smart lighting applications are still mainly concentrated in the business sector and public facilities, such as hotels, exhibition venues, municipal projects, and road transportation, where smart lighting is more widely adopted. In addition, office buildings and high-end villa projects have also adopted smart lighting. Although smart lighting, as another innovation in the lighting industry, holds promising prospects, most end-market merchants do not believe that now is a good time.

Smart Lighting Is the Future, Not the Present

Pan Shaohua, General Manager of Xiamen Rizeng Lighting

In our real life, intelligent products have become very common — traffic systems, monitoring systems, access control, etc. Smart lighting is just a small part of the entire IoT. In a broad sense, it is regarded as scenario lighting; in a narrow sense, it is understood as simple remote control, dimming, and color adjustment of luminaires.

As for smart lighting, I believe the development trend is unstoppable. Moreover, with the improvement of consumer spending power and the deepening of consumer awareness, smart lighting will reach countless households, bringing convenience and enjoyment to customers. However, at present, lighting and luminaire merchants do not have a deep understanding of smart lighting — they pay more attention to product replacement and lighting functions. Therefore, to promote intelligent products right now, we need to strengthen the user experience and let consumers truly feel the benefits of intelligent products, so as to drive consumption.