Luxeon "beats" xenon lamp in camera phone flash
Power LED manufacturer Philips Lumileds says that its Luxeon emitters can now deliver superior performance to xenon lamps for cell-phone camera flash applications.
In tests performed by the company, which is headquartered in San Jose, CA, the LED-based flash produced 1 lux sec at a distance of three meters, compared with a xenon lamp that delivered only 0.67 lux sec.
Philips Lumileds claims that this proves that LED-based flashes can now be used in cameras designed for high-quality imaging.
According to the company, the Luxeon flash enables illumination of 30 lux or more at a distance of two meters. Crucially, the LEDs are more efficient and operate at a lower voltage than xenon lamps, meaning that they do not drain so much battery power.
The camera flash is now seen as the key application in cell-phone handsets to drive future revenue growth for LED chip manufacturers. Although the keypad and display backlights still represent a huge annual market in excess of $1.7 billion, the relative maturity of backlighting technology and the rapid decline in average selling prices means that this market value will likely drop in future years.
Last year, a report from Strategy Analytics predicted that by 2009, revenues from the camera flash function would represent 36 percent of the total LED market in handsets.
