Lighting and displays: Value chain
Who grows the chips and builds the panels in your phone
What this tab covers Who does what, from equipment makers to builders, owners, operators, traders and users, with the leading companies at each step.Semiconductor wafer and phosphor suppliers feed LED chip and package makers, whose packages go into lamps, luminaires and display backlights; lighting brands and panel makers sell to builders, electricians, device makers and consumers.
The chain
Materials and chips LED package makers Lamp and luminaire makers Display panel makers Laser makers Installers, owners and users| Stage | What happens | Leading companies |
|---|---|---|
| Materials and chips | Sapphire or silicon wafers, gallium and indium compounds grown into LED layers, rare-earth phosphors. | |
| LED package makers | Mount chips with phosphor and lenses into packages. TrendForce data shown by ams OSRAM put the 2023 LED market at about USD 11 billion, with Nichia at 15% and ams OSRAM at 13%; TrendForce's last free full ranking (2021, USD 17.65 billion package market, top three 29.5%) is the basis for the rest of the list. | Nichia (Japan) ams OSRAM (Austria/Germany) Samsung Electronics LED (South Korea) Seoul Semiconductor (South Korea) Lumileds (United States) MLS (China)711 |
| Lamp and luminaire makers | Combine packages with drivers, heatsinks and optics into bulbs, tubes and fittings, increasingly with sensors and controls. | Signify (Netherlands), 2025 sales EUR 5.8 billion Acuity Inc. (United States, formerly Acuity Brands), fiscal 2025 net sales USD 4.3 billion812 |
| Display panel makers | Build LCD and OLED panels for TVs, monitors and laptops. In large panels (9 inches and up), Omdia's 2025 forecast gave BOE 37.1%, China Star 16.8% and Innolux 11.4% of LCD shipments, and Samsung Display 54.3%, LG Display 29.4% and EverDisplay Optronics (EDO) 13.9% of OLED shipments. | BOE (China) China Star / TCL CSOT (China) EverDisplay Optronics (China) Innolux (Taiwan) Samsung Display (South Korea) LG Display (South Korea)9 |
| Laser makers | Industrial fibre and disk lasers for cutting and welding. IPG names Coherent, Trumpf, Raycus, Maxphotonics and nLight among its competitors; Chinese makers hold about 98% of China's market for 3-6 kW lasers and about 80% above 10 kW. | IPG Photonics (United States) Coherent (United States) Trumpf (Germany) Raycus (China) Maxphotonics (China)1314 |
| Installers, owners and users | Electricians, facility managers and households. About 30% of household lamps worldwide were still not LED, and nearly 15% of residential lamps are early LEDs near end of life. | 1 |
Free LED rankings are dated: the 2023 shares come from a company presentation citing TrendForce, the full list from TrendForce's 2021 release.
Sources
- The next wave of LED lighting: smarter, circular and more efficient (commentary) International Energy Agency, 2026
- Global LED package market value reached US$17.65 billion in 2021 with Nichia ranking first, says TrendForce LEDinside (TrendForce), 2022
- Signify publishes 2025 Annual Report (press release) Signify, 2026
- Omdia forecasts large-area display shipments to grow 2.8% YoY in 2025 (press release, 3 October 2025) Omdia, 2025
- ams OSRAM investor presentation, 8 November 2024 (citing TrendForce LED Player Revenue and Capacity 4Q23) ams OSRAM, 2024
- Acuity Inc. annual report to shareholders, fiscal 2025 Acuity Inc. / US SEC, 2025
- IPG Photonics Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 IPG Photonics / US SEC, 2026
- Laser technology in transition: moderate growth in the laser market (AKL'26 press release, 30 June 2026) Fraunhofer ILT, 2026