Very well said, this is exactly what happened with the domestic automakers, aka "The Big Three". Up until the 90's they didn't have any real foreign competition and did not take anyone seriously. They assumed people will keep purchasing Ford, Chevy, and Dodge simply because they have done so in the past. They laughed at the up and coming Japanese automakers Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. They didn't adjust their pricing, didn't compete with them head-to-head in terms of offering similar technology and value. Look at them now....American automakers are, with very few exceptions, a big joke.
A three mode light that lets you use your smart phone bluetooth to set the three modes to exactly what you need for a given task. ?
I predict an LED emitter that is lollipop shaped. Luminous surface area is increased producing global uniform intensity. Will probably happen once the phosphors become efficient enough reducing issues with heat.
I can't wait. Would certainly hush the HID fanboys.
Phosphor-doped sphere at the end of a fiber tip, then pump blue laser light through the fiber and use that as a retrofit omnidirectional source to use big reflectors meant for arc lamps. You might need to build it around something like a heat-pipe as support to help with heat dissipation in the phosphor though.
Better batteries are one of the more important improvements that can be made to a flashlight. Currently, we have lithium ion, which has a high voltage, a high energy density and is light weight. But it's not entirely safe, needs to be monitored, can't produce terribly high current, and the voltage drops with discharge. On the other hand, NiMH is safe, can produce high current, can be 'beat on' pretty hard, doesn't need monitoring, and produces a stable voltage while discharging. But the terminal voltage is lower and they are less energy dense. What we need is a battery that combines the best of the two. LiPO4 might come closer than most technologies. But even LiPO4 falls quite short.
Achieve the ability to throw 500 lumens for 6 hours straight before force stepping down to 200 lumens for another 2 hours before a cell is nearly exhausted, and I'd say that would be the kind of performance that would satisfy more than enough people.