LED Specialist Diguang Ventures into
PC Terminal Production
By George Liao
Diguang International Development, a U.S. listed company founded in 1996 and specialized in LED lighting technology, savored the display of its capabilities to produce LED backlit PC terminals, including notebooks, monitors, all-in-one desktop PCs, and TVs, in COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2009.
Diguang started by making backlights but ventured into the territories of making LED backlit PC terminals (OEM & ODM) in 2009. “At the beginning, we made both CCFL and LED backlights. In 2006, we became a listed company in the U.S. Now we are about the biggest backlight producing company in China. About 2 years ago, we began R&D for terminal products, which included two areas. One area was LED lighting gear, including bulbs, and the other is LED-backlit PC terminals, including notebooks, netbooks, LCD monitors, and all-in-one computers. We will begin to mass-produce LED TVs at the end of this year,” said Jerry Yu, COO and Executive Vice President of Diguang.
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Yu said Diguang will continue to dedicate itself to the R&D of LED lighting not only because LED has the advantages of low power consumption, high quality images, low weight, slimness, and long life over CCFL, but also because LED is friendlier to the environment and better for human health. “Unlike CCFL, LED contains no mercury, and is therefore friendlier to the environment, and unlike CCFL, LED also has no problems of flickering and electromagnetic wave emission, both are harmful to the eyes,” Yu said.
Yu pointed out that a CCFL bulb flickers over 40,000 times per second, which human eyes cannot recognize. However, the flickering does exist and it is harmful to the eyes.
Elaborating on potential health hazard of CCFL backlight, Henry Song, President of Diguang, said, “CCFL bulbs, which operate at about 50 KHZ, cause electromagnetic radiation concern. According to Media reports, exposure to electromagnetic radiation even at a low operating frequency can increase the possibilities of contracting leukemia, brain tumor, premature birth and other diseases. However, the possible harmful effects of accumulative exposure to the electromagnetic radiation generated by CCFL backlit TVs or monitors still need to be backed up by more scientific studies.”
According to Yu, currently about 95% of PC terminal manufacturers are still using CCFL backlight, but LED is the backlight future of the ICT industry.
“LED backlight is an irreversible trend in the ICT industry even though CCFL backlit products still dominate the market. For example, Samsung announced early this year that they will adopt LED backlight in 20%-30% of their backlit products in the next two years. However, all netbooks with screens under 10.1” have adopted LED backlight out of necessity because LED lighting saves energy and extends battery life,” Yu said.
Speaking of Diguang’s advantages of its foray into the PC terminal production industry, Yu said, “Since we are a latecomer in the industry, we don’t have any historical burdens. Our advantage is that we started from making backlight, so we have a better understanding of the characters and applications of LEDs.”
Price is Diguang’s another advantage. Yu said, “Some manufacturers, such as Samsung and Sony, have produced LED TVs, but their prices are two to three times the prices of CCFL TVs. For example Samsung’s 40” LED TV is priced at RMB16,000, and Sony’s 42” LED TV sells for as much as more than RMB20,000. However, we will price our LED TV only about 20%-30% higher than the price for the CCFL TV. We can do that because we produce LED backlights by ourselves and streamline our production process. Our target is to sell our LED TVs at about the same prices as the CCFL TVs once our sales volume goes up to a certain level,” Yu said.
According to Yu, in the area of PC terminals, Diguang is currently focusing on making 19”, 22” and 24” monitors and all-in-one computers which feature slimness and light weight. “A 19” CCFL monitor weighs at least 5 KG, but our 19” LED monitor weighs only 2.5 KG. One of our models has the thickness of only 13.3 mm, and another new model is only 12.8 mm thick. Our all-in-one computer weighs less than 5 KG, whereas most all-in-ones in the markets weigh about 6 or 7 KG,” Yu said.
Touching the area of marketing and business model, Yu said, “We have LED backlight customers all over the world. With regard to PC terminals, we are currently making products for DEO under an ODM model.”
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