AfterDawn: News

iSuppli: LED shortage to hit TV industry

iSuppli has issued a warning to manufacturers of LCD televisions about an upcoming shortage of LEDs, which are used for backlighting of some LCD televisions. LEDs provide a much better video imagery for viewers when used in LCD TVs, compared to LCD TVs that utilize fluorescent lamps for backlighting.

LCD televisions generally required between 300 and 500 LEDs per panel, all producing a uniform level of brightness. This makes the sector much more vulnerable to an LED shortage than notebook makers for example, as notebooks generally use about 50 LEDs in LCD screens.



Due to the popularity of LED-backlit LCD televisions, consumption of LEDs rose from 57 billion units in 2008 to 63 billion in 2008. iSuppli expects it to reach 104 billion by 2011, while current industry capacity is about 75 billion units.

Unless LED fabrication plants are built rapidly, or manufacturers figure out how to reduce the number of LEDs required in an LCD television whilst not compromising on picture quality, iSuppli predicts that the industry will have to deal with a "drastic under-supply" of LEDs starting later this year.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 8 Mar 2010 19:42

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• 3 comments

• Tarsellis

  typical psychological attack. create a perceived shortage and advertise it, in order to create false demand. Large scale recent example, see h1n1 vaccine.

  13.3.2010 16:46 #1

• leglessoz

  Where was there a shortage of vaccine. Australia produced more than enough for every person in the country.

  15.3.2010 07:20 #2

• Tarsellis

  Originally posted by leglessoz: Where was there a shortage of vaccine. Australia produced more than enough for every person in the country.That's my point. Create a perceived shortage in order to create artificial demand. This is a well known and practiced psychological trick. When humans see a resource becoming scarce, they panic, short circuit the rational part of the brain, and act on emotion to "get theirs" before somebody else does, so they're not left out, even though they didn't want the resource before.
  
  Same reason auctions usually generate higher prices that stores, and why auctioneers ALWAYS talk fast.

  15.3.2010 11:35 #3