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To: Uncle Frank who wrote (17888)	2/13/2000 9:11:00 PM
From: pompsander	Respond to of 54805

If someone should come up with a cheaper blue LED chip to put in between the leads, the value chain could switch to it without skipping a beat Certainly correct. However, for over twenty years virtually every kind of substrate was tested to try to find the "magic blue" LED. (Like the black orchid, I guess). Sapphire became the best available because no one could grow SiC or any other element in a pure enough form to compete. Sapphire had decided disadvantage, all of which have been spelled out on this thread and the CREE thread by Fatboy, Robert Jacobs and Unclewest. CREE's innovation of creating a commercially viable means of growing SiC without micropipes and other flaws was the breakthrough. Now, will someone else find way to grow one of the other elements which will produce blue when charged? Maybe. Or find a new overlay which will turn a common substrate into a blue emitter. Possibly. Nothing on the horizon now, though. And during this period can CREE make enough inroads into the huge market, and push prices down SO LOW that other alternatives will have a difficult time ever making a business case work? Possibly.

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (17888)	2/14/2000 2:01:00 AM
From: FLSTF97	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

CREE LED Switching Costs Are there any switching costs associated with blue LEDs? There are some but they would be overcome quickly if the price difference was significant (say 10% or so). First not all LEDS are packaged as a single unit, some are arrays. There could be tooling/reprogramming costs especially if we are talking SiC vs Sapphire. I don't know for a fact, but I would guess this may be on the order of $1000 to a few 10's of thousand dollars. Probably the most significant cost would be requalification. That would be application specific. It could be many ten's of $1000. Probably the biggest barrier (and its not that big) is the general inertia to change within a products life cycle. I think that the other applications for SiC devices would have much higher switching costs because of the functionality being designed into a system and the expect longevity of those system. In short, for the LED application the switching costs are not insurmountable. FATBOY