I think it's the latter. I have been looking at proper led-lighting for my house a few months ago but when you want a lightbulb comparable to a 40W incandescenc

I think it's the latter. I have been looking at proper led-lighting for my house a few months ago but when you want a lightbulb comparable to a 40W incandescence lightbulb it's filled with 80 LEDs (though it consumes only 4W). The cheapest I could find cost about €20,- while a simple incandescence lightbulb costs about €0,50. I could also get 'High-Power' led-bulbs, filled with only 3 - 10 LEDs and producing the same amount of lumen but they all had a higher power consumption than the 80-led bulbs and strangely where more expensive (this probably has to do with heat removal requiring big heat sinks).