LED lights business news about some international leading players

Siemens Building Technologies Division has announced that it is buying Enlighted, a Silicon Valley startup that has focused on networked LED lighting as a backbone for smart building applications and the Internet of Things (IoT). GE, meanwhile, appears to be progressing toward selling both the GE Lighting and Current operations that are related to the lighting sector. Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) has announced that its solid-state lighting (SSL)-centric intellectual property (IP) licensing program called EnabLED has surpassed 900 members or licensees.


Enlighted acquired
Everyone knows, Siemens has a focus far beyond LED lights, and at first glance that may seem a misconnection with a company that has been associated with the LED lights sector — arguably standing for one subsystem in a building. But Enlighted has always regarded networked lighting as the enabling backbone and was among the earliest of smart lighting companies to talk about other building systems and applications ranging from HVAC control to commercial office space optimization.

Financial details of the transaction have not been made public, but the business is expected to close in Q3 2018. The plan is for Enlighted to stay as an independent subsidiary of Siemens that will benefit from a close partnership. With Siemens as a global partner, Enlighted will both accelerate innovation and market adoption of our smart building technologies on an international scale.

GE to exit lighting
Moving to GE, it keeps against intuitive that a company involved so long with lighting would completely leave the sector, but it appears just that will happen. We have covered the rumors of such an exit for some time, including the news of the divestment of European operations earlier this year. Now it appears the company is deep in a formalized divestment process.

The Edison Report website has posted a copy of a memo that GE distributed to partners in the lighting sector. The company has solicited and received first-round bids for both the residential GE Lighting business and the commercial lighting products in the Current, powered by GE business including the Daintree IoT unit.

GE still had a strong demonstration at LightFair International this year, including some new offerings that would show continued LED lighting research. For example, we reported an ultraviolet (UV) continuous disinfection demonstration that was on display. But the parent company plans to finalize a deal to sell the units in September, 2018.

Signify/Philips Lighting
Philips Lighting, meanwhile, was spun out by Royal Philips and generally seems to be going in a good direction; it announced the official name change to Signify a few weeks ago. The company has been aggressive in its own product coverage, focusing heavy investment in the IoT and smart lighting. And surely its EnabLED licensing program is doing quite well.

The company said it had recently added 100 new licensees, bringing the total past 900. The success of the licensing program that provides access to more than 400 inventions and over 2600 patents to companies that sell their own branded LED products, which is achieving the rapidly increasing share of LED-based sales in the lighting market. The strong continued growth in membership shows the further maturing of the use of LEDs in the market.

The recent actions of the company also suggest a market confidence in its future that is clearly without GE. For example, the company just announced this week that it repurchased 1.3 million shares during May at an expense of €33.2 million ($38.7 million). Such a repurchase plan would prove that the company considers its share price undervalued by the investment companies.