One thing I have noticed with LEDs and flashlights is that unlike other things the doesn't seem to be any anticipation of new LEDs before they are released, with the XM-L it seemed like days from it being released to every Chinese seller selling drop ins with it. It seems odd that manufacturers would just make a full scale release without any press releases or pre production samples being sent out.
So, I am interested to know, what is supposed to be the next big LED to be released?
The XM-L was announced in April of last year and only released in November. 4Sevens implied that companies selling lights right off the bat were using pre-production LED's that Cree made available to the different manufacturers ahead of the official release. Once the release date came, there seemed to be a lot available, maybe as Cree was stockpiling them or maybe once the line starts producing them, they can produce tons of them.
I don't know anything else announced but not out yet, but the focus seems to be on making bigger and bigger LED's geared towards household and commercial lighting. Flashlights have always been a pretty small piece of the pie.
That is a great point!
Another issue would be cost effectiveness of R&D. Innovation is important, sure, but for a lot of more-or-less price-sensitive specialty applications, such as automotive lighting there's really no need to push the envelope any further because the technology we have right now is "good enough"(tm). And that's probably the case for both, full-scale R8-style lights and DRLs, which will become mandatory for new production vehicles in Europe soon and that will pretty much turn something that was the epitome of cool when it was introduced in the S6 just half a decade ago into something you'll soon see on a base-trim Jetta (and AFAIK DRLs were a relatively new concept in the rest of the world until a few years ago, with the exception of Scandinavia).
And frankly, you don't want the latest and greatest for these type of niche applications - you want something tried and true, and with all the paperwork needed to make a bunch of government agencies in a few dozen countries sign off on your design, you'd best have something new in the pipeline before your current design hits the showrooms. IOW, I think there might be less emphasis on squeezing out 10% more while using 5% less power because the market just isn't that mature yet.
I had to Google to find out what DRL was, you're right on Scandinavia my parents had a Volvo c.1984 with them.
People continuously tried to tell them they had their lights on by accident :)