Just as consumers begin to tear themselves away from the incandescent bulbs they've known since childhood in favor of those curly new CFLs (compact fluorescent light), here comes a new player: the Light-Emitting Diode or LED. Born in 1962, scientists were able to produce any light you wanted as long as it was red. LED has some advantages over incandescent bulbs: much longer life, much greater efficiency and no mercury (a problem that's dogged CFLs from the beginning.) Plus, CFLs are huge.

Philips, the 119-year-old European technology giant, saw 6.5 billion euros in LED sales in '09. The company expects to see 80 billion euros in 2015 sales. But there are huge price hurdles: Popular "warm" light costs 46 euros per 1,000 lumens, while "cold" light costs only 25 euros.

So to promote them, the company had LEDs put in the ball that drops on New Year's Eve in New York's Times Square.

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