Companies participating in the exhibition, which is being jointly hosted by the Korea Association for Photonics Industry Development and KINTEX, include such leading LED companies as LG Innotek, Lumimicro, and Mediana Electronics from Korea, LumiLEDs from the U.S., Everlight Electronic from Taiwan, Sanyu Rec from Japan, and Monocrystal from Russia.
Building on the success of Korea's hosting of the world's first LED exhibition in 2003, more than 150 companies from over 10 nations are scheduled to participate in this year's event to display such items as chip LEDs, LED lamps, LDs and Backlights on a total of 300 booths, thus consolidating the status of LED Expo as a truly international event in name and substance.
As LED has come to the fore as a new source of light in various industrial fields, the LED Expo has emerged to become an invaluable forum for exchanging ideas and information among LED-related professionals around the world.
As testament to the growing interest in the expo, the number of overseas buyers participating in the event has increased from some 300 in 2003 to over 500 in 2005. For this year's event, the secretariat office predicted that nearly 1,000 overseas buyers would participate.
In the meantime, China, aroused by Korea's successful hosting of the first LED EXPO, held a similar exhibition in Shanghai one year later. In the following year, Taiwan and Japan both held LED expos, benchmarking the Korean expo.
Moon Ok-gyeon, secretary general of LED Expo explained, 'The number of companies taking part in the expo has been increasing continuously. Among them, some 70% are regular participants. And, what this shows is that the fruits from their participation had been excellent. The enthusiasm to take part in our expo and seminar on the part of buyers and large corporations like OSRAM of the United States, in particular, is very high.'
Explaining that Japan already has a lot of patent rights to white glow LEDs that are receiving much spotlight as an important technology of the future, Moon said that circumstances are in fact not favorable for Korea to take a lead in this field. However, he stressed that, since Korea already possesses world-class LCD technologies that are indispensable for LEDs' advancement, the day on which Korea can stand on a par with advanced nations in this field is not far away, considering that Korea is developing associated application technologies to stand against the core technology of Japan as well as the advanced countries.
Shin Moo-hwan, chairman of the Advisory Committee of LED Expo and professor at Myongji University, said, 'The purpose of the Expo is to invigorate the LED market by getting a good grasp of the industry's world trends, as well as strong points and weaknesses, and making remedies through seminars and lively discussions among world-class researchers.' During the expo, a international seminar will be held for two days on May 18 and May 19 under the theme of 'The standardization, packaging, and application systems of high-capacity LEDs.'
This seminar will be a very helpful place for many LED experts and researchers to actively interchange LED technologies through presentations. World-renowned experts will be participating in the seminar. These include Professor Shin Moo-hwan and Dr. Michael Lebby, the chairman of the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA), and Professor Samuel Graham of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The LED is regarded by many as revolutionary in the lighting industry, ever since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb 120 years ago. It is being utilized in various industries and products, including household electric appliances, automobiles, traffic lights, display boards, medical devices and surgical instruments, substitutes to neon lights, and Display Back Lights of mobile phones that have fast emerged as a top valueadded industry of Korea. Moreover, LED, as a source of light with 'High Brightness,' is forecast to have enormous ripple-effects on other industries.
Moreover, the energy-saving traits of LED and its environment-friendliness have made the United States, Japan, and China, among others, select the development of LED lighting as a national project to be pursued with large investment on a term-tem basis.
In the meantime, Strategies Unlimited of California forecasts that LED lighting will grow to a 1.2 trillion won market in 2010, accounting for about one-tenth of the 12.9 trillion won lighting market.
저작권자 © Korea IT Times 무단전재 및 재배포 금지
