My choice is 5 years give or take base on the following:
1)Talked to couple magazine oper
ators and most agreed brand loyalty is very tough to break in the marine world.
2)Early breed of commercial LEDs and not very technical DIY has kind of smeared LED's name
3)LED is not understood by the public and the public continuously think of the old ones relying on information from forums which have very little useful informations. Many aquarists I met bought moonlights(5mms) to test the viability of LED in replacing mainlight. 1W vs 400W. Even if you have 100% efficiency of 1W is still only 1 watt of energy.
4)The current aquarists are not green enough to trade their already successful tanks for new tech. I met a client who ask me to send him a free LED light to test and his argument is that he is also putting a 30-40 thousand dollar corals in the test. As the trend of green thinking grows in the world, in 5 years time new generation will more incline to get greener solutions even if that means more money.
5)As manufacturers of the most developed countries almost completely switched over to LED as witnessed last LightFair in New York(90-95% exhibitors are LED-both manufacturers and retailers including the tradiditonal flourescence giant Philips.) New techs come out from this new in flux will create better solutions to all lighting industry including this super niche market-I
saw Europe based lighting company with LED ficture that looked as evena s any flourescent counter part from almost any angle you look at it. Point source glares has been a deterence in interior lighting with LED. Price will drop as usual-look at the introduction of energy saving flourescent bulbs-when the first company who did the LARGE SCALE inroad to Homedepot they were like $8/$9 a pcs. But one year later it's only $3/4 a pcs. Besides price drop and better suited products developed, it also due to the shrink of other manufacturers, avaialbility of the MH and T5 will shrink and adversely affect their market share. Consumers will be stuck with no choice but LED by then.
6)Avoiding the competition, not so successful lighting companies(like me) will have to develope the niche market and thus more aquarium products will emerge. So that why I say not 2 years but 5 years.
Finally, reading my analysis take 5 years too. LOL