Based on the advantages of LED, smart lighting has developed rapidly over the past two years. Yet we can also see that certain technology and price issues are constraining its rapid growth, and how to break through them has become an urgent problem for the smart lighting industry.

More than a month earlier, Philips held a signing ceremony with China Electronics, announcing that China Electronics Sanda Group and Philips Lighting would establish a joint venture whose main business is smart road lighting. The company's main business includes the sale and system integration of lighting products and their control systems related to smart road lighting.

"Philips is committed to responding to the Chinese government's call to build ecological, smart new towns by promoting green and intelligent LED lighting," said Kong Xianghui, CEO of Philips Greater China.

Earlier, an industry professional said: "If you look 5–10 years ahead, you can see that the LED smart lighting market will develop fully. What is particularly worth noting is that, at this decisive battleground of the smart lighting industry, Philips has long been laying out its position."

RenJie Plastics has launched a thermally conductive plastic for heat-dissipation fins that reduces cost by 20%–30% compared with conventional aluminum heat-sink fins. The emissivity of this thermally conductive plastic is 7–8 times higher than that of aluminum, giving excellent thermal performance. Combined with the fact that plastic injection molding costs less than metalworking and offers high mass-production efficiency, overall system costs are expected to keep falling — good news for the semiconductor lighting, energy-saving and environmental-protection industry.

Philips' R&D spending on smart lighting will account for as much as 95% in 2015. The strength of Philips' focus on the smart lighting field is enough to show the future prospects of smart lighting.

Li Haijun, General Manager of Fujia Electrical Appliance Products Co., Ltd., said that in today's home and commercial lighting decoration, many people do not understand how to match space with lighting, whereas smart LED luminaires allow people to easily adjust to a suitable light environment according to their needs through smartphones, tablets and other smart devices — no traditional switches required, and extremely convenient.

The pursuit of convenience is undoubtedly fundamental to the future development of smart lighting. People's quality of life is gradually improving, which places new demands on home lighting. Beyond controlling the operating hours of lighting fixtures and meeting different brightness needs, lighting must also work with the home system to achieve a coordinated and attractive effect, and to create corresponding lighting scenes for different atmospheres and occasions. Of course, the most important point is that it must offer flexibility, so as to adapt to layout changes made later.

"In recent years, smart communities have begun to develop rapidly thanks to government subsidy measures. In the next two years, as people's standards for home decoration rise, smart lighting will have broad room for development in the home sector, and the smart lighting market will flourish by then," said Zhang Haidong, General Manager of the smart home brand Kaifuqi.

[In the original, the RenJie Plastics marketing paragraph is repeated verbatim at this point — see the paragraph in section 1 above.]

Li Haijun shares this view. Judging from feedback from distributors across the country, everyone is optimistic about smart home lighting, and many distributors have called the company to request relevant materials.

Tang Jihua, General Manager of RenJie, said that the domestic smart lighting industry should leverage the real estate sector: as the national economy develops rapidly, the two should advance side by side and press ahead at full speed. Integrate with real estate; integrate with furniture and decoration. "An integrated home decoration design solution can bring a perfect experience to a complete home."

At present, smart lighting is positioned too high-end, making it hard to match the psychology of ordinary consumers and therefore hard to promote. Zhu Cheng, Marketing Director of Boni Lighting, said that only a product close to real needs is the product customers need: product functions that match, a reasonable price, an independent brand, and quality service reaching ordinary households — that is the best way out.

"At present, there are still relatively few smart lighting control systems on the market that are compatible with luminaires and inexpensive," said Sun Jianning, General Manager of Shangshun Lighting. The key to a smart lighting control system is achieving low cost; smart lighting above all needs to be promoted, and only when it is widely used can the price gradually come down. But for now, the penetration of LED smart lighting is not high, and consumers are still at a stage of limited familiarity with LED lighting, so when they buy, the most direct approach is to look at the price.

In response, Li Haijun said that price does indeed affect large-scale promotion, and that the market is currently limited to the mid-to-high-end consumer segment.

"In addition, in terms of promotion, smart lighting requires building an intelligent experience showroom so that customers get a direct, intuitive experience," Li Haijun said, sharing his company's promotion experience with everyone.

Some years ago, the intelligent stepless LED control lighting system widely promoted internationally allowed tunnel lamp luminous intensity to gradually increase in the morning as the sun rose, and to gradually weaken in the afternoon as the sun moved west, until it switched off. This also spurred the rise of emerging concepts such as vector lighting, on-demand lighting and secondary energy saving.

Wang Micheng, President of Hongyan, explained that, for example, in an underground parking garage fitted with Hongyan's smart lighting control system, when a vehicle drives slowly past, the garage lights switch on automatically and stay on with a 30-second delay; when there is no vehicle, the garage lights automatically adjust to a low power of 5 W to maintain lighting in the garage. After secondary energy saving using Hongyan's smart lighting control system, underground garage lighting can save more than 70% of energy consumption compared with an ordinary LED solution, greatly improving energy saving and environmental performance.

Energy saving and emissions reduction are increasingly sought after, and automatic sensing control devices will be applied in more public places. But this is only the currently more mature area of smart lighting; for smart lighting to have a bigger market, it still needs to keep seeking new markets. Japan has already begun putting an "LED smart hospital lighting system" into use, achieving energy saving through intelligent control.

[In the original, the RenJie Plastics marketing paragraph is repeated verbatim again at this point, and the article title appears once more at the end of that block.]

Since the smart lighting industry entered the Chinese market in the 1990s, it has been developing slowly. No large-scale consumer market has yet taken shape in the smart lighting field, and most smart lighting manufacturers have been committed to exploring a development model suited to the industry's future and to guiding consumers. Some people in the industry believe that consumers' shallow understanding of smart lighting is the most important reason why the smart lighting business cannot grow large or strong. Because it lacks "popular support," the market has failed to grow big. A beneficial, high-tech product is reduced, in the eyes of ordinary audiences, to a luxury item labeled "impractical." While working on technology, smart lighting should think even more about how to raise brand and product awareness, tap consumer demand and stimulate the desire to buy.