LED have been used in all applications in electronics and also in imaging for providing long lasting consistent illumination, as well as indicators in instruments but only recently have started entering the market as home lights.
UK based IMS Research publishes reports that estimate the market for packaged LED’s and they have estimated the market to be about $10.9B for 2012. However, the interesting aspect they point out is that after 2015, the market is said to reduce. Strangely, that is because the LED is so long lasting that once you have replaced all the customer’s needs, the replacement of new LED’s does not need to happen as often.
This would be also be relevant for any other consumer industry, once you start making devices that are very effective, you lower the potential for replacement. This could be true of cars that go to 100,000 miles or Operating systems like Windows – once you are very efficient at what you do, and then the manufacturer needs to diversify. And hopefully, make something that they can continuously improve!
Conclusios: Each manufacturer of technology needs to devote a significant part of their resources into R&D, no matter how safe they consider the market.