Charles M. Swoboda
Analyst · SIG
Yes, so the market opportunity has not changed. And we've been pretty clear about that probably for the last 5, 6, maybe going on 7 years. The biggest market for LED lighting is commercial lighting. It's just the biggest market for lighting. It's 75%, 80% of all lighting is in a commercial, industrial, municipal-type application. The consumer is a much smaller segment of the market. As far as our change, we've been talking since we launched the bulb, one of the things we said is the bulb is a means not only to sell to consumers but also to build a brand. And what we've found, and this is something we said last March when we announced the product and it's proven to be very true, is that while we were able to move some of the commercial markets, because the consumer wasn't involved, with the bulb, we've been able to engage a much broader part of the population into a conversation about LED lighting and getting people to think about why do you still use that old energy wasting, frankly, money wasting technology. And so the bulb has become and the consumer market has become both an incremental revenue and profit opportunity. But really, and as well as a brand opportunity for Cree, it's also become a way to really drive the conversation about LED lighting generally in adoption. So I think you can see not only in our consumer sales but just an overall awareness of LED lighting, as the consumer becomes more involved, we're shifting that dynamic, which I think is very healthy for Cree and others. But if you want to look at the big picture, at the end of the day the bulb is -- I mean, it's funny. The bulb is a relatively small part of the overall market. Yet at the end of the day, there's 5 billion sockets, I think, in North America alone. So it's relatively small, but it gives you some sense of how big the lighting opportunity is. And that's why earlier, and it may have been when I was -- it was -- having trouble talking during the prepared remarks, but today there is -- I think the DoE just came out and looked at in the United States, despite all the commercial fixtures and all the bulbs that have been sold by Cree and everyone else, less than 1% of the sockets in are currently LED-based. And so what I think you've got to keep in mind is, is that the 2 parts of the market work together. It's part of our strategy to drive adoption, be a leader, build brand. But both of them are big opportunities given where we stand today.