Wow.

At Strategies in Light Europe 2014 in Munich, Christian Schraft, President of Havells-Sylvania made the following comment:

In China, the top 50 lighting players account for 20% of the market.  The top player holds only 1%; everyone else is less than a percentage point.  The other 80%?  Tens of thousands of tiny companies.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch which market analyst Schraft was referencing.

(I’ve heard that Philips Lighting is the #1 lighting company in China; but I can’t confirm this without further research.)

Later, Gary Hua, President of Inventronics, Inc, referenced a Frost and Sullivan report which claims that from 2008 to 2013, the China SSL lighting market increased from $0.5b to $5.4b (USD).  China’s SSL lighting market is expected to increase to $24b in 2018.  Hua included that this increase has been driven by a very active role by various Chinese government ministries promoting the production and consumption of SSL lighting, while also restricting use of less efficient older technologies.

Hua stated that there are nearly 20,000 SSL companies in China; 15,000 of these are in the “downstream” categories (luminaires, lamps).  China’s SSL supply chain runs on very low margins, in fact, Hua believes only 20% of these companies are profitable.