The data picked white LED in 1998. Philips announced it would split off its lighting business 16 years later.
Rooms were lit by filament bulbs, then by fluorescent lamps, where a coating of rare-earth phosphors turns the glow of mercury vapour into white light. The white LED is a small blue chip with a phosphor coating that turns part of its light yellow, so the mix looks white. For each we measured how much better per dollar it got each year, using only the patents that existed at the time.
% better per dollar each year. One reading a year. White LED line starts at its first reading, 1998.
From its first reading in 1998, white LED was improving faster than both kinds of lamp: about 29% better per dollar each year, against about 13% for fluorescent lamps and 10% for filament bulbs. The gap widened to 2007, and white LED has led at every reading since.
The early white LED inventions were mostly about the coating: almost half improve the phosphor, and half aim at the colour of the light. The new light still used rare earths, but new phosphors, and ten to a hundred times less of them for the same light.
Our data: white LED improving more than twice as fast as fluorescent lamps.
A US government prize for a replacement of the 60-watt bulb goes to an LED bulb.
Philips announces it will split off its lighting business.
Osram decides to carve out its lamps business.
Solvay’s results report lower rare-earth sales in lighting.
LED is nearly half of all lighting installed in the US.
The EU stops new fluorescent tubes from being sold.
It would not have said when LED bulbs would get cheap, or which lamp makers would last. It would have said white light would come from LEDs, with new phosphors and far less rare earth per lamp, sixteen years before the biggest lamp makers began splitting off their lamps.
For a lamp phosphor supplier, that is the window to plan lamp volumes down and move lab hours to LED phosphors and other rare-earth uses.
In 2025 La Rochelle opened a rare-earth line for magnets. The same reading can show which separation route pulls ahead now.
TIR — the Technology Improvement Rate — measures how fast a technology gets better each year, computed from global patent data. Not who is filing, or how much: how fast the route is actually moving. Historically, the fastest-improving technology always wins.
Provenance. Every patent carries a publication date, so the record can be replayed: every improvement rate on this page uses only the patents that were published at the time. Chart data: GetFocus platform exports, October 2026.
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