How should optical design enterprises plan for the future amid the recovery of end-user demand?

Based on a profound understanding of optical design, TOPLITE has, since its establishment in 2003, been deeply engaged in the research and development of optical design solutions and optical devices, continuously seeking innovative and practical optical solutions to the challenges faced by LED products.

Looking at the present: Significant growth in the exhibition and film/television markets

Internally, with 18 years of development, TOPLITE boasts a top-tier R&D team and advanced testing equipment. Adhering strictly to optical theories, the company has designed a series of innovative optical products and holds a large number of international and domestic invention patents.

Currently, TOPLITE's optical devices play an important role in various professional LED products and equipment. Applications adopting its optical design solutions have flourished in many countries and regions in Europe, the Americas, as well as major cities in China. These applications cover industries such as smart wearables, medical devices, security, machine vision, stage entertainment, film/television lighting, museum exhibition lighting, high-end commercial lighting, outdoor lighting, automotive lighting, and special equipment, solving numerous technical problems in the industry and earning an excellent reputation.

Externally, in 2021, with the gradual popularization of vaccines worldwide, the market economy began to recover. Starting from the first quarter of 2021, demand in the lighting market rebounded, especially in commercial, outdoor, and engineering fields. Meanwhile, supported by global energy conservation and emission reduction policies to achieve the "carbon neutrality" goal, LED energy-saving renovation projects gradually unfolded, and the penetration rate of LED lighting continued to rise. According to LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, the penetration rate of the global LED lighting market reached 57% in 2021.

The steady upward trend in end-user demand, coupled with the increasing popularity of the company, drove the growth of TOPLITE's revenue scale. It is reported that the company's 2021 revenue was mainly concentrated in stage lighting, pattern projection, exhibition lighting, and film/television shooting lighting.

Among them, TOPLITE's matrix-type high-power LED modules, high-definition imaging lens sets, and high-definition wide-angle imaging projection lenses have successfully gained customer recognition in the two application fields of exhibition lighting and film/television shooting lighting, now becoming a major source of the company's revenue.

It is worth noting that TOPLITE's previous revenue was concentrated in the stage lighting field, with stage lighting contributing 70% of its revenue in 2020. With the company's active expansion into more business areas, exhibition lighting and film/television shooting lighting have now successfully replaced stage light accessories as the new pillar optical products of TOPLITE, with significant revenue growth in these fields in 2021.

In terms of products, TOPLITE's matrix-type high-power LED modules are light source modules for lamps, with a maximum power of up to 2KW, which can even be further increased. Using these modules enables lamps to achieve more uniform color mixing, smaller color difference, higher brightness, and effectively eliminates ghosting.

In terms of application cases, TOPLITE has provided unique optical solutions and devices for some of the world's top film/television producers, with its products used in the shooting scenes of many Hollywood blockbusters.

Looking to the future: Layout in metaverse, industrial applications, and other fields

LEDinside points out that the future driving forces of the lighting industry will mainly come from: lighting devices with higher energy efficiency, lower cost, lighter weight, smaller size, easier installation, and more convenient intelligent control. With the development of IoT technology, intelligent control will become a major driver of the future market.

TOPLITE also believes that in terms of product form, the miniaturization, lightweight, precision, and intelligentization of optical device design processes will be a major trend. To this end, in 2021, the company adjusted in a timely manner according to the market environment, focusing on the miniaturized product market, improving existing product lines, continuing innovation, expanding product categories, further improving lean production and management, and enhancing profitability.

The metaverse will drive more manufacturers to invest in the construction of virtual worlds, and the popularization of VR/AR devices used by end-users will be a key to the development of the metaverse industry. LEDinside estimates that global shipments of VR/AR devices will reach 12.02 million units in 2022, with an annual growth rate of 26.4%.

TOPLITE has long laid out in the VR/AR field. Leveraging its profound accumulation in imaging optics, it has launched two VR product optical solutions: refractive imaging optical solutions and short-focus folded optical path solutions, each with 2 optical lenses, totaling 4 optical lenses. In addition, TOPLITE has also launched a series of AR optical display lenses.

In the summer of 2021, TOPLITE launched a newly designed short-focus VR optical architecture. This product adopts short-focus lens combination technology, which can reduce the size of VR products; based on the principle of short-focus optics, the volume and thickness of the entire lens module and VR products are reduced.

Notably, TOPLITE is currently cooperating with a Danish VR brand to provide it with a complete set of VR optical display solutions. It is reported that the VR products include models for the C-end and professional models for film/television workers in the B-end.

In the field of industrial optics, due to harsh operating environments, the industrial sector has stricter requirements for lighting products, such as cold resistance, high temperature resistance, waterproofing, and high stability. Based on this, TOPLITE has developed and designed high-density condensing optical modules, which have obtained invention patents for high-density condensing optical modules, solving the problem of low condensing intensity of most modules in current industrial applications.

In addition, the high-density condensing optical modules adopt more aspherical shapes in design, which can reduce the number of required lenses to control costs, while improving light energy density and efficiency. The products are smaller in size, making it easier to obtain high-power modules. Meanwhile, the modules have been upgraded and optimized for the ultraviolet band, and can be matched with LEDs (including visible light, IR, UV, etc.) and laser chips from various manufacturers in the industry. They can be applied not only to traditional fields such as stage lighting, outdoor long-distance projection, narrow-angle searchlights, and projection lighting for ships and aircraft, but also to other application fields such as industrial inspection, detection, disinfection and sterilization, lithography, and curing.

Conclusion

From stage lighting to exhibition lighting, film/television shooting lighting, and further to future VR/AR and industrial lighting, TOPLITE closely follows market demand, continuously expands its business coverage, provides customers with high-quality optical devices, and endows LED lighting with higher light quality. With the further improvement of product layout, TOPLITE has embarked on a fast track of development.

(Article: LEDinside Lynn, Chinese version first published and reprinted from www.ledinside.cn)