“In the LED bulb market, dominant players will retain their positions in 2015,” said Joanne Wu, an assistant research manager at LEDinside. Meanwhile traditional brand lighting manufacturers will focus on strengthening their brand image to improve their prospects of selling bulb products in the B2C market.

That will benefit the quality of products in the B2B market, she added. But prospects are daunting for small brands, who lack strong distribution channels or their own niche market segments. “They have two choices: to become OEMs or to exit the market,” Wu said.

According to LEDinside’s forecast of the top 20 LED lighting manufacturers by revenue, in 2014 the top 5 lighting brands will be Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba, GE and Osram. Cree, meanwhile, is an upstart.

“Cree is aggressively promoting its bulb and lamp products. We predict it will be among the top six LED lighting brands by revenue,” Wu said.

A number of trends that began in 2013 will continue to shape the industry through 2015, Wu said. Those trends include the development of the LED lighting product business, which is essential for traditional or new LED lighting manufacturers as well as a push to boost profits.

“Branded manufacturers have grown in terms of revenue, but that has not always resulted in high profits,” Wu said.

“Manufacturers are profit driven. They will employ great efforts to increase their profits as LED lighting becomes increasingly commonplace in the professional lighting market.”