NEC recently announced its withdrawal from the lighting business. NEC Lighting, a wholly-owned subsidiary of its lighting business, will be sold to the investment fund Nippon MiraiCapital on April 1, 2019. Nippon MiraiCapital will establish a new company after the acquisition of NEC Lighting. As a consideration, NEC will receive a 5% stake in the new company.

NEC pointed out that since 1952, the lighting industry has been in existence for more than 60 years. However, due to the fierce competition in LED lighting in recent years, the lighting industry has suffered losses every year, so it decided to withdraw from the lighting market.

It is worth noting that in recent years, due to fierce competition in the LED general lighting market, manufacturers are actively developing emerging niche markets, trying to compete against price competition with technical strength. Among them, the promotion of intelligent lighting has attracted much attention, but the application scenarios involved in intelligent lighting are very wide, and the requirements for system control in different fields are different.

According to the latest data from research unit LEDinside, the global smart lighting market in 2017 is close to 4.6 billion US dollars, with an annual growth rate of 95%. It is expected to reach 13.4 billion US dollars in 2020, and the global intelligent lighting market has entered a stage of rapid development. NEC's exit from the lighting business indicates that Japanese manufacturers have not caught up with the trend in a timely manner in the face of fierce competition in the market.