21st November 2006

Cree & Arrow Electronics LED Distribution Agreement

Cree, Inc., announced a global distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics, Inc., to sell and support Cree XLamp products worldwide. The agreement gives Arrow’s over 130,000 customers ready access to Cree’s latest commercially available technology and a growing family of XLamp products. It also gives Cree’s customers access to one of the world’s largest and most efficient distributor supply chains. Together, Cree and Arrow intend to accelerate the adoption of solid-state lighting globally by providing superior high-power packaged LED products and services to designers and manufacturers of lighting products.
The agreement positions Cree as a premium LED vendor to Arrow Electronics’ thousands of customer-facing field representatives, applications engineers and technicians in 290 locations throughout the world. Arrow Electronics gains the ability to offer its customers Cree XLamp products, some of the brightest and most efficient high-power LEDs on the market today. Among the Cree products available through Arrow will be the recently released XLamp 7090 XR-E Series LED, the first 160-lumen white power LED and first power LED that is as efficient as fluorescent sources.

Arrow’s new Lighting Group will support customer design and development activities. Staffed with regional lighting specialists and lighting applications engineers, the new Lighting Group will provide full system solutions support for optical, thermal, and control electronics design.

“Offering Cree’s world-class technology and ground-breaking innovations further demonstrates our commitment to helping our customers accelerate time to market in designing high-brightness and power LED lighting solutions,” said Bob Sagebiel, director of lighting business development, Arrow Electronics. “Our customers are at the leading edge of LED lighting designs and this agreement allows them broader access to the products and support they need.”

“Arrow Electronics represents the first global lighting distribution agreement Cree has awarded and a milestone in our strategy to grow global sales, marketing and distribution capabilities,” stated Bob Pollock, Cree senior vice president, sales. “With this agreement, Cree is aligning itself with one of the top electronic components distributors in the world and its large base of customers to drive the LED lighting revolution.”

Web: www.cree.com