GE is discontinuing the Lighting division

GE is breaking up with the light bulb, its most iconic accomplishment

It looks like GE shot itself in the foot with the beginning of its LED bulbs.  The fact that the LED's last much longer than incandescents and need to be replaced much less often helps me understand why light bulb sales are falling so dramatically and GE is planning on discontinuing its lighting industry all together.  That's really sad to see.  I've grown up using GE light bulbs, and now they will be obsolete. 

On the bright side, after a few years, the discontinued GE bulbs, which I have a lot of may become really valuable antiques and collector's items 

I have heard the same.  I have been told that the M-250R2 which was formerly special order only is now discontinued.  The M-400R3 is sold only by remaining stock, and is no longer able to be ordered, except what is in current stock. 

The only question I have is, what do they do about warranty issues?

The only question I have is, what do they do about warranty issues?

Those will be referred to "equivalent" LED luminaries from the company that 'acquired' GE's lighting assets.

I have been told that the M-250R2 which was formerly special order only is now discontinued.  The M-400R3 is sold only by remaining stock, and is no longer able to be ordered, except what is in current stock. 

I think this was only for your particular electrical supplier, as they're still listed on the GE website.

On the bright side, after a few years, the discontinued GE bulbs, which I have a lot of may become really valuable antiques and collector's items 

Don't bet on it.  The market is so flooded with GE bulbs and light bulbs in general, they won't be worth any more than anything else.  Light bulbs are not a collectors item unless they are 100 years old.  Sorry. 

Saw this one coming. When Philips and Cree lobbied for lighting legislation to push LED technology this was their strategic attempt to overthrow the original light bulb manufacture.

GE was always the first first and the best, Philips couldn't stand always being 2nd or last.

Even more sadly, is that due to the same legislation or own DOE has sold our entire lighting industry in the USA to China.

So... on the flip-side, Philips and Cree will ultimately fail due to strong Chinese manufacturers that will overcome their products. Pretty vicious cycle it looks like.

Sad time for lighting.

The M-250R2 is GE's most popular product. In no way was it or is it a special order item... If anything the M-400 would be a special order thing since they're used far less often than the smaller cobraheads.

Dieselbulb has it right. GE was always the best in lighting for years. In the past 25 years that has changed dramatically, though part of that is their own fault. The quality of their products has dropped a lot in the past 25 years. Starting in the 90s their street light quality started slipping. The latches on the M-250R2s didn't latch as well once GE went to the 2-bolt slipfitter in 1994. The pre-1994 M-250R2s latch super snugly. GE's HPS street lights have also been plagued with capacitor issues since the 90s and still have those problems. Before that though their MV capacitors sucked (70s and 80s).

Their HPS lamps in the 90s were the best. There are still some here that are working in fixtures installed in the early 90s and these fixtures (also GE for the most part, with some being American Electric) are working flawlessly since they day they were installed with their original lamp and PC. But their newer HPS lamps I heard are not as good. Their MV lamps for sure are not anything remotely decent. Their MH lamps are junk too. Their recent halogens and incandescents have been rubbish as well. They still make a good fluorescent tube though. IMO the best modern fluorescent lamps out there are made by GE.

GE has always been known for their innovation in lighting and elsewhere. They designed the first practical HPS lamp in the mid-60s and pioneered many street light features such as the Powr/door, plug-in ignitor, tool-free PC socket, full cut-off optics for cobraheads, and I'm pretty sure they came out with the first 2-bolt slipfitter (the rocker fitter, debuted on the M-250A and M-400A and also used on the M-250R1, M-400 split door, and early M-400R2s and M-400A2s) and I think either they or Cooper came out with the leveling step design that all major manufacturers use today.

I hear that the GE HPS lamps are still some of the best available.

You heard wrong.  Over the past 20 or so years, they have flat out sucked. 

Heard about it also. Totally sucks.

And TBH, LED is hit or miss. And when it is miss, it is far worse than incan. I am currently struggling with 2 LED lighting issues in my home that are far worse because the light source is irreplaceable and irreparable LED "systems". The LED lighting in our fridge crapped out. There are 6 LED modules in the fridge, one of them is the integrated control module that controls the other 5 modules (slaves). This master module is $300 online. Turns out a $300 module replacement will only give me about a year of lighting in my fridge until it goes out again. Many fridges sold in USA have used the same module in different fridge models. I don't know which module in my fridge is master, as they all look the same.

And our under cabinet lighting, which I installed in 2015 has already failed, and silly me, I thought that by buying "premium" LED tape that I'd be safe building the LED lighting into the underside of the cabinets. I have already tried to repair the light tape, not going to happen while installed. I wish I could just get good old incan Lumilines under there, much easier to replace the infrequent incan burn out than fix LED lighting systems. I don't know how much money I have "saved" by having LED, but I feel like LED has just been a big hassle in my life.

Oh yeah and I just get a chuckle out of all of the gas stations, parking lots and occasional street lamp that blink or strobe now that they have been "upgraded" to LED. I am sure property owners are like "WTF"? "This place was built in late 1970s, had the original lighting until last year when I had LEDs installed, and now I have to constantly deal with LED failures? The old HID lamps only needed attention every 10 years!!!!!"

I have been trying to find older Christmas lights for my preference of displaying the classic stuff over the holidays. I have found that GE has usually distributed a consistent product. Their USA made stuff was excellent, of course, but even when they began to outsource, they kept their quality quite high. Even for some GE LED Christmas lights that I bought 2 years ago, the colors of the lighted LED, which are to appear like incan ceramics, matched the colors of the GE "Glow Bright" bulbs from 30 years ago. They didn't just contract to some Chinese factory, GE actively put effort into their product having that same GE appearance and appeal.

Hopefully GE does NOT license its name out, like Westinghouse does (well, Westinghouse doesn't even actually exist any more). I hope, sadly, that the GE name just dies and never comes back.

@ takemorepills: GE is not going anywhere, they're just getting rid of their lighting line, which they turned into a separate company called "Current". GE will be around for years to come, they just won't make lighting anymore. They'll still make many of the other things they've made over the years and will be going down new more profitable avenues. It's just so surreal that GE, a company that has been so prominent in electric lighting, will soon not make lighting anymore. For their residential retail lighting products, they will probably still sell a limited selection of lamps, but it will just probably be a generic lamp inside a GE box...

s98, I know that. I was just referring to GEs lighting division.

I know GE has many more big things going on like jet engines and medical, etc.

My point was that, if the ACTUAL GE isn't involved with lighting products anymore, I truly hope that they don't licenses out their name for use on garbage lighting products, or any products that they are not actually involved in. You know, like "Westinghouse" branding. There is no Westinghouse, therefore Westinghouse doesn't oversee the Chinese made crap that gets plastered with the "Westinghouse" name for a naming rights fee.

I understand that, my point is that the GE name cannot be used by another company because GE isn't going anywhere. The real Westinghouse doesn't exist, so when they went under, they sold all their assets, including their name. GE isn't selling their name, they're selling their lighting divisions, which were GE Lighting for lamps and GE Lighting Systems for light fixtures. HOWEVER, GE renamed both of these divisions "Current", so in effect GE is retaining all the rights to their name and branding. So whatever company buys GE's lighting lines will ONLY have ownership of the products and the name "Current", they won't have the right to use the GE brand from what I understand.

Now, GE could pay another company to continue making residential lamps for the retail market, which I assume is what you are saying. But that's totally different from the Westinghouse thing. The Westinghouse name is actually owned by ABCo (Angelos Brothers Company) so technically Westinghouse is its own company right now, but ABCo have never made anything ever; they literally only exist because of other companies (they slap their name on other people's products). But that's not one manufacturer using another company's name, that's one company using their own brand on various Chinese products. There's nothing to "oversee" because it IS Westinghouse (aka ABCo, which owns the rights to the Westinghouse name) putting their name on the products. It's just like how WalMart uses Great Value branding and Lowes uses Utilitech branding and Home Depot uses Commercial Electric branding. Great Value IS WalMart. Westinghouse IS ABCo. WalMart doesn't actually make anything they slap their name on. Neither does Lowes or Home Depot. But Great Value, Utilitech, and Commercial Electric are their name that they own, so no one is "plastering" someone else's name on anything.  They have every right to use that name because it's their name.

The difference here is GE is not selling the rights to their name, they're selling the rights to their patents and tooling. If GE was able to make a decent LED fixture maybe they wouldn't have to sell out of the lighting business... Their LEDs are complete crap so hardly anyone is using them. They used to make top of the line lighting products and was a leader in the industry but current GE products are almost as bad as the crap China is pumping out all over the place. In fact some of the Chinese stuff I've seen is better than GE's stuff! They've really let us down. I think GE got lazy and thought they could just live off their brand name and longstanding reputation. Maybe they thought no one would notice the quality of their products slowly spiral down the drain. It's a royal shame and it kills me since I'm a HUGE fan of older GE street lights and lighting products. Back in the 1960s GE street lights were tough as nails. No one could beat a GE cobrahead. They had hiccups with design flaws but the ingenuity was always there with the first 2-bolt fitter way back in 1966, the Powr/door and Powr/Bracket fixture line, the first full cut-off cobrahead optics in the late 70s, first tool-free PC socket and plug-in ignitor in the 1982 M-150, first to introduce HPS to street lighting in the 60s, you name it. GE carried the street lighting industry from its infancy. The last great thing Westinghouse had done was introduce the cobrahead in 1957, which turned out to be a brilliant invention that has remained in production even six decades later. After that nothing new came from Westinghouse while GE continued pumping out new ideas and improvements to their products. The most Westinghouse ever did after their 1957 breakthrough was introduce the boxy OV-15 and OV-25 in 1979, which wasn't much of a breakthrough. The compact fixtures overheat and the exposed slip-fitter bolts rust to oblivion.

Meanwhile GE cobraheads saw invention after invention until the early 90s when GE gave up. After around 1990, GE started to give the impression they no longer cared about the quality of their products. The doors on their lights started accidentally unlatching and falling off, especially on the M-250R2s. Many M-250R2s have issues with dirt and water accumulating in the refractors, the PC socket springs break and the PC cannot be removed (PC socket will endlessly rotate with the PC when you try to twist out the PC), the reflectors on their M-250R2s and M-250A2s are wobbly and cheap, and their current edition M-400 and M-400A are loose clones of AE's 125 and 325 fixtures. Ironically the M-400 and M-400A are better built then their own designed current edition M-250R2s and M-250A2s. And the 250 and 400W HPS GE fixtures are plagued with capacitor issues. Though their 70s and 80s MV fixtures were too, perhaps to push along the then-new HPS fixtures, which conveniently rarely had cap issues as far as I'm aware, until the 1990s. Back when the M-250R2 first came out it was a really nice light. But they've cheapened it to the point where it's complete crap. A 1985 and 2017 M-250R2 look pretty similar from the outside but hold each one in your hands and you'll know right away which is which. And their Evolve fixtures are 10 times worse which I can't even fathom!

I guess the point to my long-winded rant is that GE may still be manufacturing lighting products but they gave up on it some 20 years ago. I guess we're all blind for not seeing this day coming. I always had hope that they'd straighten out and take over as leader once again. Pretty naive of me but GE products had always run deep in my family. My grandfather had GE everything and so did my great-grandfather. My great-grandpa worked for the electric company and they too were GE nuts. GE was the best of the best and everyone swore by them. Now there are not many GE products I would put my reputation on. Their fluorescent lamps are about it. And that's only because they're better than the competition. Doesn't necessarily mean they're anything incredible...