Here's the situation on
Stage types- They are immune to Gov't efficiency regulations as they are "Special Purpose" lamps for a specific industry, and not for General Household or office illumination. That said, as volumes decrease and margins plummet (HPLs used to sell for $25 when they first came out. You can now find them on the web for what? $14? They didn't become $11 cheaper to make during that time period), the business is less appealing as we would have to sell more to make the same amount of profit, and with
LED fixtures replacing
Halogen ones in the market, we aren't selling more, we are selling less.
Also, where lighting manufacturers used to have a few competitors, now with LEDs we have hundreds, and they are smaller, more nimble, and faster than us to respond to technology changes because they aren't bound by huge corporate structures. I can't speak for what GE is doing in the
ENT market, except to say that they laid off their specialty lamp sales force about 4 years ago (which is how we got one of them -- woot! a coup I tell you!) and rolled it all into their General lighting sales branch (
Current), which is now being
bundled with their lighting and being sold off. Which is what Siemens did with OSRAM a while ago, and what OSRAM did almost two years ago with our General Lighting product portfolio (now sold by a company called LEDVANCE).
Everyone is going the way of Technology- USHIO is showing up at most tradeshows under their ZYLIGHT brand and not their USHIO brand, I'm not sure what Philips is doing and they would have to say for themselves, and they got completely out of
Halogen Specialty lamps entirely, focusing only on
Metal Halide and
Mercury Vapor (and fixtures/LEDs) moving forward, where they've always been strong. They also sold off their Xenon Cinema lamp business (Formerly LTI), which was an interesting development- probably fueled by the changes they see coming in that market to
LED and
Laser in the coming years. OSRAM is similarly moving forward as a technology company, and focusing on OLED, Lasers,
LED,
etc. No one wants a manufacturing footprint anymore as it ties them down to old technology, so everything is probably going to be eventually outsourced to manufacturers in cheaper areas of the world. GE isn't making
PAR lamps in the USA, but they are still making
Halogen lamps (BTL,
HPL,
etc.) in Hungary and China I think, but who knows for how long. Most
PAR lamps from this
point on from all manufacturers will be made in China. The reason they are hard to get at the moment, is the time needed to validate and qualify new factories, and approve & test the quality of the product coming out of there. OSRAM will have our PAR64 1000W lamps back in
stock next month BTW, and we have no
current plans to discontinue them. We ran out fast when GE closed their factory and suddenly lamps from them and us got harder to come by. Some traditional technology lamps will get cheaper (
PAR lamps, moving from the USA --> China). Some will get more expensive (Sockets and High-wattage
halogen lamps such as DTY, BCM,
etc.) because the companies that make the various smaller components are going out of business, or wanting to charge more for such small volumes as the quantity declines. Already a few years ago we had a discontinue some lamp types (DNE/DNF) and sockets (
TP220) because the supplier of key components when out of business and we couldn't find new sources that wouldn't charge a massive tooling fee which would have made them non-profitable for at least 10 years to recoup the money.
Metal Halide should remain stable for a while as the market is still very strong there due to companies like
Clay Paky,
Vari-Lite, Chauvet, Elation, Robe,
Martin Pro,
etc. all still making fixtures using lamps.
