The firm said the three public offerings indicate both the accelerated adoption of LED backlighting technology and some very early signs of the move toward solid-state lighting.

Inside the space of one week, Aixtron and Veeco Instruments, two vendors that develop MOCVD (Metal-Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition) equipment for volume LED production, raised a combined total of $360 million and cited strong backlogs in orders for MOCVD equipment.

Those two offerings followed a similar move by leading LED chip manufacturer Cree, which raised net proceeds of $434 million and recently announced the decision to build a new facility in China.

“Strategy Analytics believes that this backlog represents orders for some 200 production reactors that can be expected to come on-line during 2010,” said Asif Anwar, director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductors Service. “Both Aixtron and Veeco will need to add production capacity, and will have to invest in technology development for subsequent demand cycles.”

The firm said LED-based backlighting has reached a tipping point, and it expects to see significant acceleration of the market for LED-backlit LCD TVs from 2010 on, added Steve Entwistle, vice president of Strategy Analytics’ Strategic Technologies Practice. “The financial moves also indicate concrete plans for future growth phases of the LED market with solid-state lighting for general lighting applications.”