Shanghai, China - 23 April 2017 - China has seen the start of shipments on visible light communication (VLC, or Lifi) modules and Lifi-enabled LED bubbles, revealed in a recent report published by Innova Research, a Shanghai-based market research and consulting firm focusing on emerging technologies. Innova Research estimated that the Chinese Lifi market worth less than RMB 10 million (approximately $1.45 million) in 2016.

Although the Chinese Lifi market is still at its infancy, the technology has increasingly become a hot topic in China for the recent years. Leading universities and research institutes, such as Fudan University, have set up research teams to work on this technology, while industry players, including LED lighting suppliers seeking opportunities to upgrade their products, have started to develop feasible applications for Lifi technology. In addition, a number of start-ups have been set up based on the Lifi technology developed in the universities and research institutes, as well as by overseas returned scholars from Europe, USA, among other countries.

Innova's Research shows that the largest downstream application of the Chinese Lifi market is indoor positioning. In a Lifi based indoor positioning system, each Lifi-enabled LED bubble send a unique code, which can be decode by smart phones pre-installed with the relevant APP, and the position of the LED bubble will be found and shown on an electronic map on user's smart phones. Such positioning function will bring considerable convenience to users, for example, enabling them to easily find their cars in a large car park field, or to promptly find the goods they want to buy in a supermarket. In this application, the Lifi-enabled LED bubbles only need a one-way communication to send their positioning codes and therefore the cost of the Lifi modules for the positioning application is much lower than the costs for the normal Lifi modules with two-way communication function.

Richard Jun Li, Vice President of Innova Research commented:"Lifi market is still at an infant stage in China, but the market has great potential. We have seen an initial breakthrough of Lifi at the low-cost in door positioning application, and more feasible applications will emerge in the next few years while continuous efforts are made by researchers and industry players on the Lifi technology."

For more information, please contact richard.jun.li@innovaresearchinc.com