In the past two years, despite numerous challenges facing the global commercial architectural lighting market, the commercial construction industry has been gradually moving towards green and low-carbon development under the current call for energy saving and emission reduction, providing new opportunities for lighting companies. Focusing on how lighting companies can play an important role in the transformation of the construction industry, LEDinside, TrendForce’s optoelectronics research division, had the privilege of interviewing Oliver Vogler, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Zumtobel Group, Khaled Khaled, Lighting Managing Director of Asia Pacific, and Jiang Keqiang, General Manager of China. While discussing the impacts and challenges facing the lighting industry in the era of smart interconnection, we also gained an in-depth understanding of how Zumtobel Group leverages its cutting-edge lighting technology and supply chain advantages and deeply integrate them with smart commercial buildings and future market development strategies.

Zumtobel Group, as a leading European lighting manufacturer, focuses on the commercial architectural lighting market with three major brands - Zumtobel, Thorn Lighting, and Tridonic. In recent years, Zumtobel Group has gradually increased its investment in the Asia-Pacific market, benefiting more users with its innovative lighting technology and products. According to the latest data compiled by TrendForce, Zumtobel's total lighting revenue for the 2023 fiscal year was $1.2 billion, ranking fifth globally.

Source：5 July 2024, TrendForce

Continuous Product Innovation and Human-Centric Approach are Key to Achieving Eco-friendly Architectural Lighting
Energy efficiency is a key trend in the lighting industry, with sensor-based smart lighting systems playing a crucial role. Zumtobel is actively promoting sensor-based smart lighting systems. Vogler stated, “Recent years have seen the emergence of smart lighting products, smart buildings, and whole-house smart solutions. However, true professional architectural lighting and commercial lighting have very strict acceptance standards and entry thresholds. The application of sensors should go beyond the basic ‘lights off when people leave’ functionality and combined with lighting products to monitor human activity. For instance, in shopping mall lighting, sensors dynamically identify crowd density and adjust other parameters accordingly, or in emergency situations, smart indicators can be turned on.”

Human-centric lighting is another product development focus valued by Zumtobel Group. The company no longer solely pursues high luminous efficacy. Instead, it turns to emphasize user experience when designing products. Different groups have different spectral needs. From a professional perspective, night shift workers like factory workers, firefighters, police officers, and nurses benefit from correctly using human-centric lighting products to help them switch between rest and alert states. From an age perspective, the elderly need lighting products that soothe emotions, young and middle-aged people need circadian lighting products to regulate their routines, and children need lighting that protects their eyesight. Zumtobel Group introduced eye-care floor lamps twenty years ago, continuously upgrading the technology to lead in lens design and color rendering. Additionally, as Volgler revealed, in office lighting, people need new stimuli to return to conventional office environments after the pandemic slowed down. New lighting designs will revolutionize workspaces, differentiating lighting in various activity areas to save energy while adjusting employee emotions, boosting work efficiency and positivity. In industrial lighting, human-centric lighting has strong advantages for industrial shift work, facilitating higher alertness, better sleep efficiency, and shorter sleep latency. In a recent case, Volvo Trucks has adopted Zumtobel’s tunableWhite system featuring adjustable color temperature, providing optimal lighting solutions for each type of work at every workplace.

Figure 1 A recent case of Zumtobel applying human-centric lighting to industrial lighting - Volvo Trucks’ largest production base

Research and development is at the core of Zumtobel Group, with about 6% of annual revenue dedicated to it. The company consistently ranks among the top three in Austria for patent ownership across industrial enterprises. The latest focus of the company’s research team is on sound control in lighting. In spaces with specific acoustic requirements, like theaters, cinemas, and exhibition halls, lighting products need to minimize noise with echo effects. This is achieved through innovative materials and design of the lamp shades to reduce noise and reverberation.

Zumtobel Group Enters the Smart Building Business with Value Chain Advantages
Indeed, Zumtobel has a strong brand advantage in the upstream supply chain of smart commercial architectural lighting. Its lighting accessories brand Tridonic and luminaire brands Zumtobel and Thorn Lighting have gained global reputation in the field of smart lighting.

However, in the commercial construction sector, especially that the professional commercial construction industry has very high quality and safety standards. Smart lighting products and equipment are just a very small part of it, and achieving true intelligence in commercial architectural lighting solely by lighting industry practitioners is not an easy task. Therefore, in order to make up for the shortcomings in the smart commercial construction control field, Zumtobel has been striving to make itself more professional through acquisitions and collaborations, fully leveraging its value chain advantages. In 2024, Zumtobel Group introduced the IoT brand Keyture for the first time, accelerating the integration of future digital services and lighting infrastructure.

Keyture is Zumtobel Group's new Internet of Things ecosystem, characterized by intelligence and cloud connectivity, which explains how Thorn and Zumtobel luminaires achieve optimal smart effects with professional sensor support, ensuring the lighting system operates with the highest energy efficiency. In addition, Zumtobel Group has recently established ecosystem partnership relationships with Siemens and Siemens' building technology company Enlighted, among others, leading to new breakthroughs in solution effectiveness, wireless deployment, and smart adaptation technology.

Figure 2 Zumtobel’s smart architectural lighting solution

In addition, Zumtobel Group has secured the exclusive rights to Digital Lumens’ SiteWorx IoT software for Europe, integrating this software into its smart architecture solutions. The core strategic goal of the company by 2030 is to become the global leader in smart lighting and smart spaces.

Vogler told LEDinside that data processing and user service are the most crucial aspects. Zumtobel is committed to providing last-mile service, enabling customers to not only experience smart lighting but also enjoy a digital infrastructure that makes the entire building smart. Zumtobel Group dedicates 20% of its business to customized integrated solutions, fully leveraging the advantages of sensors, IoT systems, and smart luminaires to create tailored smart lighting applications for clients.

......many people are talking about software, business software as a service based on the sensor data. So you generate data and you offer software solutions for it. But they don't want to do this last mile because they say, oh, we just want to use the data for our software. And We like to do last mile on the lighting industry. We like to plan the lighting layouts. So we can also include the sensor layout as well......

By Oliver Vogler

Primary Focus on the Chinese Market, Taking on Future Challenges
Zumtobel Group considers the Chinese market a key strategic breakthrough point to further enhance its position in the global market.

Despite the current challenges facing the Chinese real estate market, the support from the country’s government and the rise of eco-friendly high-tech buildings provide new development opportunities for Zumtobel Group's high-quality lighting solutions. In the interview, Vogler mentioned that the demand for high-tech and high-standard solutions is increasing in China. Most office buildings of high-tech companies in Europe and the US, such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google, have already upgraded to smart lighting systems and relevant replacements. He believes that Chinese high-tech companies will also incorporate smart lighting systems into their corporate management upgrades. Zumtobel Group has the capability and strength to provide full-process services to high-tech enterprises like Alibaba and BYD.

 

TrendForce 2024 Global LED Lighting Market Analysis
Release Date: 01 February 2024 / 31 July 2024
Language: Traditional Chinese / English
Format: PDF and Excel
Page: 90-100 / Semi-Annual