If a chip manufacturer knows how to make a chip that can achieve 10 umols per joule, then he also knows how to make a chip that can make less than that....and that's exactly what he's going to do. All he has to do is to slightly increase the chip efficiency every few months and just sit back and watch the hoards of light builders order the slightly-improved chips to keep ahead of the game. Then, when the market becomes saturated with those, the chips will get even more efficient and the whole process will repeat again and again.
This displays both paranoia about the motives of manufacturers and implies a conspiracy theory, along with a fundamental ignorance of what's actually happening in the industry.
Take chip manufacturing, for example; all makers of chips are constantly upgrading their chemical recipes, processes and ancillary components in the never ending quest to build ever more efficient chips for ever lower costs. This is EXPENSIVE and it's time consuming and has to be paid for. There's no not doing it or the competition eats your lunch in a hurry.
Therefore, the latest, best chips have to be expensive to recoup the cost of R&D, tooling, etc- otherwise Cree, Citizen and Samsung would be out of business.
The problem comes when there's another, slightly better chip, because in order to keep per chip costs down, they have to do huge production runs, far more than the market needs in the next few weeks or even months. So what to do with the inventory of stuff that isn't cutting edge? Same as is done with last year's sexy hot video card for your gaming rig; you discount it to move the metal.
Now you have a whole constellation of different chips with different characteristics and specifications, all priced at different levels- and every damned one of them is somewhere on the obsolescence curve, meaning they will be out of production sometime in the foreseeable future. It's a straight up nightmare for a light maker who wants a consistent pipeline of parts for a production run of lights that needs to be of a fairly large size to gain economies of scale- otherwise they're going out of business too.
What's an LED light maker to do with that mess? Some (Mars) buy cheap chips, drive them hard and go after the low cost end of the market, where customers who aren't savvy respond to a sexy price, in the process giving up longevity and efficiency. Others (HLG) spend more on chips, use more of them to drive them softer and thereby get better efficiency and greater life. Knowledgeable customers buy these lights because they know they're getting a better unit, one that will save them money in running costs and early replacement.
It isn't a matter of doling out minor improvements to string customers along, it's fierce competition with a constant stream of incremental improvements forcing everyone to work, and spend, to keep up.
Who benefits? Everyone! The race to build better chips means greater energy savings and therefore lower costs in the long run for everything that uses those lights, even the weed grown with them.
The thing for y'all to concentrate on isn't necessarily who's got the latest killer spec sheet, it's what light gives the needed combination of price, performance and quality that serves your needs. I have a slew of lights that are several years old, still doing what they did when they were new. They won't need replacing for a good long time. When I'm ready to buy lights again, I'll expect the price/performance envelope to be a little bigger than it was last time, but that doesn't mean the old stuff should meet the crusher. After all, it's working fine and happily returning the investment made in them- and will continue to do so for as long as you keep using it.
Just thought I'd clear up a few misconceptions about the market for lighting before they get out of hand.
Hope you liked this chat, and happy growing!