LED bulbs have only been out for 2 or 3 years now. Their design is still changing and their price is still dropping. They're still in a state of transition as both the theoretical science and practical technology behind producing them are refined.

I've still got 13 watt (60 watt equivalent) Compact Fluorescent bulbs in the hallways of my building, but I fully expect to stock up on LED bulbs once I start seeing them going on sale, which may not be for another few years yet.

But, the bottom line is that even if the bulbs cost more than CFL's, it's still worth a lot to me to not have to be changing light bulbs in my hallways all the time. I used to buy 5000 hour incandescent bulbs. My CFL bulbs are rated at 12,000 hours, and LED's are advertised at 100,000 hours. That means with 21 hallways lights, I'm looking at changing one LED bulb every 6 or 7 months.

Also, the Nobel Prize:
Our technology involves not only making scientific discoveries that lead to new technologies, but by marrying different technologies together to come up with ways of doing things we couldn't do before or doing things more efficiently or accurately or inexpensively than before, and that in turn ends up making that technology more practical and available to the masses. When computers cost millions of dollars, only large businesses and governments could afford them. Now that you can buy a refurbished computer for $100, everyone can afford them. The development of LED technology to the point where a single LED can be used to provide the light source for a powerful flashlight is certainly going to change our world. LED based lasers are already in our supermarkets reading the barcodes of what we buy. I have no idea what these much more powerful LEDs will be used for, but I expect that using them in lasers or with fiber optic communications cables will result in all kinds of new technologies. The idea of satellites orbiting our Earth using powerful LED's in laser beams to communicate with each other comes to mind, but how that will improve our lives on Earth is unpredictable, as the future always is. More powerful LED's may allow fiber optic computing, which promises very much faster computing and communications is another area of promise. A single fiber optic cable can carry thousands of different telephone calls each at a different light frequency on the fiber optic cable. Compare that to a single telephone call using a copper wire. How that will change our world is unpredictable, but as always, it will be for the better.