Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for Jan. 6, 2021. Looks like we made it to 2021, although the new year has brought no miraculous cure for devastating illness or self-indulgence. I do believe, however, 2021 will be better for society and for the LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors than was 2020.
There are signs that the business world is finding ways to succeed even as a pandemic continues out of control. Just today I read several positive reports from the automotive industry. The real estate market remains healthy. Our sectors have been hit hard by the sudden transition to telecommuting and overall uncertainty in commercial and industrial (C&I) applications. At the same time, applications including horticultural lighting, germicidal ultraviolet (UV), overall lighting for health, and automotive lighting promise new business opportunities.
Our business at Endeavor Business Media was not what we expected in 2020. It wasn’t as bad as how we first feared when lockdowns came last March. I am grateful our company has continued to operate and appreciative of our team working to creatively find paths forward both across the company and in the LED and Lighting brands.
Assuming COVID-19 vaccinations are brought on track and prove effective, I think the latter half of the year will be solid for the LED and SSL sectors. Moreover, there are plenty of opportunities now in the aforementioned hot application areas. Still, we start 2021 knowing that business challenges remain. We will publish one fewer scheduled issue in 2021 and our issues have trended thinner, as I’m sure some of you have noticed.
We still pledge to serve you with technology and business information on our sectors to the best of our ability. We have begun publishing far more feature-length content online and feel free to make your pitch to contribute. You will find one such example highlighted in our newsletter today. Lutron contributed an article on what the company calls full-spectrum controls.
The Lutron article is actually an excellent primer on how lighting designers and specifiers approach projects where tunable lighting is required or requested. Such projects could be one of those growth opportunities this year. But options range from very simple to extremely complex. Product developers should also find the article interesting as it is instructive as to how feature sets match application scenarios.
We have not had much news break during these first few days of January. We did get a couple of stories posted. Our Mark Halper wrote about the divergent borders of the company now known as Signify. The tongue-in-cheek first half of the story covers the continuing frustration consumers feel in sorting through LED replacement lamp offerings, and Signify’s latest efforts to simplify the buying process. Then Mark got to the news that in the C&I sector, Signify is raising prices. We’ve seen similar announcements from other lighting companies recently. Let’s hope increases stick. They will be good for the recovery of our sectors.
Our Carrie Meadows also posted a column that asked what New Year’s resolutions you made this year. She’s asking for your input through email or social media so that we can share with our audience in an anonymized fashion. Please share your thoughts. You just may inspire others to find success in 2021.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]