The lighting market for automotive applications should reach $27.7 billion in 2021, says Yole Développement.
The introduction of new functionalities including ambient light, rear light, turn signal, parking and day ruing lights, fog light, low/high beam light and more are the reasons of this success. But what are the companies behind this impressive growth? What will be the impact on the supply chain?
With the recent integration of LED technology, lighting has evolved from a basic, functional feature to a distinctive feature with high-value potential in automotive. Indeed, LED technology has given manufacturers the opportunity for strong differentiation via lighting design and additional functionalities. This is particularly true for exterior lighting, but it is also spreading to interior lighting. These changes are heavily impacting the supply chain, with new suppliers and a new value chain emerging. In 2015, the automotive lighting market totaled nearly $22.4 billion, up 5.4% from 2014.
"This growth was driven by increased lighting system content per vehicle and a more favorable product mix driven by strong adoption of LED-based front lighting systems", said analyst Pars Mukish, Business Manager, LED, OLED and sapphire activities at Yole. Indeed, headlamp and DRL systems represented 43% and 28% of total 2015 revenue, respectively. Other lighting systems including rear combination light/center high-mounted signal light, interior light, and side turn-signal light comprised the remaining 29% of 2015 revenue.
According to Yole's analysts, the automotive lighting market will continue growing, reaching a market size of almost US$27.7 billion by 2021 and driven by different growth areas:
- Short-term: increased LED technology penetration rate into different automotive lighting applications/systems, and increased lighting content per vehicle.
- Middle/long-term: potential integration of new lighting technologies like OLED and laser, development of AFLS and other security functions, and incredible developments employing lighting as a new design feature.
