LED R&D Consuming Manufacturers Product Development Budgets
Another sign of the times in the lighting industry industry is the amount of R&D money manufacturers are spending on LED development. GE Lighting will spend 50% of its total 2010 R&D budget on LEDs, according to John Strainic the company' general manager, global lighting product management. However, at a press luncheon on May 12 Strainic said GE will fully support and continue to refine its other lamp lines.
WAC Lighting is also investing heavily in LED research and one source close to the company said WAC is spending more than 80% of its R&D budget on LEDs. Along with showcasing its growing selection of LED products at LightFair, the company had a prototype for an OLED chandelier at its booth.
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.