With every improvement that General Electric has made on the light quality of its LEDs, it seems like the industrial company was pushing its fluorescent lights closer and closer into darkness.
Well, the New York Times is reporting that GE is shuttering its compact fluorescent light (CFL) into darkness permanently in favor of LEDs. The company will stop producing and selling its CFL bulbs in the United States by the end of this year.
"Now is the right time to transition from CFL to LED," John Strainic, GE's chief operating officer of consumer and conventional lighting, told the Times. "There are so many choices that a consumer has for one socket in their home that it's overwhelming. This will help simplify that."
Although CFLs were popular for consumers seeking an energy-saving bulb in comparison to regular incandescents, the rapid improvement of LEDs began pushing the former closer to the edge, despite carrying a heftier price than CFLs.
Industrial companies like GE began noticing that consumers were willing to shell out more cash for better lighting quality, and that only pushed LEDs to the forefront, so much so that government regulations reduced their price, making them an even more popular choice.
Strainic told the Times that LEDs accounted for five percent of the lighting market in 2014 and tripled to 15 percent of bulb shipments during the third quarter of 2015, as reported by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
