idleprocess
Flashaholic
No, they're not there yet, but I believe that they will get there. With the new binning specs at 85C and some of the new substrate tech being researched, I believe it won't be long until we see useful lifespans under real-world conditions at real-world drive currents at 100k hours.
Your Philips link is claiming 50k hours without no heatsinking beyond the strips themselves.
I'm sure we'll see it, but I seriously doubt it will lead to lower prices nor near-universal standards. If industry has learned anything in the last several decades it's that proprietary standards let them sell at higher margins (even though reasonably-priced universal standards lead to greater volumes and potentially greater overall profits). The financial talking head types love high margins - even if unsustainable - thus that's the focus in industry these days.
Even the cell phone manufacturers - notorious about making accessories proprietary - haven't really caved on using USB as a universal standard... there are still a variety of connectors and some will charge at an infuriatingly low rate when using non-OEM sources (well below what the source can supply).
Jury's still out on cheap LED strips. I gather that they have high failure rates. I installed some recently; if they go out no big deal for me since I'm a hobbyist ... most consumers will not be so understanding.
They are interesting in the sense that with greater LED efficiencies, one can produce staggering lumens by using many low-power LED's as opposed to fewer high-power LED's. Assuming that the low-power LED's do not have any thermal deficiencies in their packaging and can survive long runtimes without thermal considerations, one can see them competing very effectively with power LED's so long as their unit price remains low and your "lumens per dollar" metric is similar.
Commercial users are driven by cost metrics and technical requirements. While crony capitalism and inertia are barriers to change, the desire to save money and get ahead will ensure that new worthwhile products gain market share.
Residential markets are different. If you've paid attention to the sound and fury about to incandescent phase-outs in numerous countries, you'll note that residential customers are extremely hesitant to change. In the US, about the only places you will routinely find linear lighting is in kitchens, garages, and - in fleeting numbers - bathrooms with vanity fixtures; elsewhere you will find tend to find fixtures with varying numbers of Edison or Candelabra sockets. Americans in particular seem to have this aversion to florescent lighting at home - perhaps it reminds them too much of work - and have voted with their dollars for incandescent (or incandescent-like) lamps.
I suspect that floros are tolerated in garages because they are utility spaces, and grudgingly in kitchens (and the rare bathroom) due to the need for daylight color rendition and prolonged operating times in the case of kitchens.
Philips site talks extensively about upgrading existing T5 floro fixtures to LED. A chain of gas stations undergoing renovations near me has performed retrofits to their dual 4' floro fixtures (probably T12) with some flavor of strip LED; suspect they use the housing mostly as a place to stash the driver and to provide some modicum of heatsinking to the strips (thankfully they're not doing LED "tube" retrofits).
I know that the lower-power flexible-strip manufacturers have been gunning for the neon market for some time. Given that neon tops out at ~90 Lm/W (and seems to cost quite a bit to achieve that efficiency), runs at extremely high voltages, and has specialized fabrication requirements, it's no surprise that LED is a competitor. Given how the neon industry has to put their thumb on the scale with increasing pressure when doing comparisons between neon and LED, small wonder LED is eating into that market... especially with the apparent growing popularity of channel letter signs over exposed/shaped neon letters.
They had some interesting LED reports too back in the day
