Sharp Corporation has announced that it is entering the market for residential lighting with LED lamps, a product destined to bring LED lighting into the average home.

The first step will be a July 2009 market introduction in Japan of LED lamps (nine models). Along with the commercial versions released last year (21 models), Sharp will bring LED lights—a product considered by many to represent the future of lighting—to an increasingly wider market.

Sharp’s Health and Environment Systems Group is focusing on the health products business, which includes Plasmacluster Ion products and the Superheated Steam Oven, as well as on positioning energy-efficient LED lighting as a new business-driving pillar of its environmental products.

LEDs are extremely environmentally friendly, boasting long life and energy efficiency and containing no mercury. The worldwide lighting market in fiscal 2008 was approximately 9 trillion yen, with LED lighting accounting for about 300 billion yen of this. Predictions are for a lighting market worth approximately 11 trillion yen in 2012, with LED growing to roughly 2 trillion yen, or about 20 percent of this market.*

Sharp started LED research in 1968 and mass-production in 1970. The company believes it can effectively apply its vertical integration of devices and products to the manufacture of LED lights.

Sharp is eager to start a revolution in lighting through the development and commercialization of unique LED lights for both commercial and residential use.