Fluorescents Are So Over - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Fluorescents Are So Over - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog: "At the end of last month, Royal Philips Electronics completed a $791 million acquisition of Color Kinetics, the leader in computer-controlled advertising and entertainment displays fashioned out of arrays of light-emitting diodes. Coming just two years after Philips took full control of Lumileds, the Hewlett Packard spin-off that pioneered many of today’s L.E.D. applications, the Color Kinetics deal solidified the Dutch company’s leadership position in high-powered L.E.D. applications. It will be intriguing to see what Philips does with it. Cree XLamp 7090 XR Series LEDBut a very different type of announcement today might be, forgive us, more illuminating. One of Philips’ major component suppliers, Cree, issued a press release from its headquarters in Durham, N.C., claiming it had designed a light-emitting chip that could power an L.E.D. bulb producing light comparable to the 75-watt incandescent bulbs so common in American homes. If past product development trends are any guide, Philips or some other Cree customer could have a finished product for sale within two years, according to John Edmond, Cree’s director of advanced optoelectronics."