Just when you think you’ve thought of everything, there appears a new application for lasers in cars, this one from BMW: laser headlights. An application like this could mean millions of high-power diode lasers per year, which is a lot for that technology, and would amounts to the “Next Big Thing” if it catches on.
BMW says that the diode lasers would be more efficient than LED headlights, offering greater overall brightness. LED headlights are just now penetrating models made by Audi, Cadillac, Mitsubishi, and Toyota. The laser output has to be converted through use of a phosphor, of course, as it is with LED headlights. Laser sources could also allow for more refined projection onto the road.
Ten years to one million cars? BMW plans to introduce the laser headlights in a small number of vehicles in 2014. That’s 3 years away. My model for the introduction of features in cars suggests that 7 years after that the feature might reach 1 million cars, if it’s popular or required in some way. (That's because they first appear in luxury models, as options, and spread, which takes time.) In 10 years that might amount to sales of 2 million headlights (both sides) of, say, 10W each. Take your pick what the price should be. Be forewarned that carmakers are big, steady customers when you can get them, with long product cycles, but they are notoriously hard on their suppliers.
Laser spark plugs. For years there has been talk of laser spark plugs, another intriguing application. Using lasers to ignite internal combustion can enable a more uniform, greener, more stable combustion. With all the talk about hybrid cars and electric cars, going to a newfangled technology like laser spark plugs sounds expensive and, well, still half-baked. But imagine the market: millions of cars with lasers that never used them before. And after all, the conventional spark plug was patented by Robert Bosch and Nikola Tesla. Isn’t it time to improve on it?
The most recent buzz on this was in 2009, when Ford announced a collaboration with GSI and the University of Liverpool called LASIIC (Laser Ignition for IC Engines). More recently, work at Toyota and elsewhere was presented at CLEO 2011.
It's cool stuff, but considering that it's years from introduction as a product, if ever, and adding 10 years to that, we have a good 15-20 years before laser spak plugs could be a million-unit phenomenon.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Mid-Year Laser Market Update--2011 is a new peak
I just aggregated numbers from the public companies making and buying lasers, slicing and dicing for acquisitions and all that and guess what? The final 2010 numbers beat the previous peak of 2008, and 2011 is almost certain to beat that. The market would have to drop by 1/3 for Q3 and Q4 to go downward from 2010.
Moreover, 2011 may amount to a 5-year CAGR of about 6%, which isn't bad for a $7 billion industry. Depending on where you start counting, that's a growth rate a bit above overall economic growth. So in that way, 2011 is looking pretty good. In the figure below, you can see that it was a V-shaped recession, with only one down year.
It depends where you start your fiscal year. You get a very different look if you group the quarters by fiscal years from July-June, instead of calendar years of January-December. The figure below shows what you get in the shifted calendar. The market looks like it's just recovering in 2011 after a U-shaped two-year recession. And what growth in the last 12 months! About 40% over the previous 12.
The last figure shows the aggregated company data by quarter. Here it is clear that it was V-shaped at that scale.
This is company data, not the full market. I emphasize that this is just public data, and heavily weighted toward industrial lasers and telecom components. The missing revenues are heavily in medical lasers, R&D, instruments, and optical storage.
Moreover, 2011 may amount to a 5-year CAGR of about 6%, which isn't bad for a $7 billion industry. Depending on where you start counting, that's a growth rate a bit above overall economic growth. So in that way, 2011 is looking pretty good. In the figure below, you can see that it was a V-shaped recession, with only one down year.
It depends where you start your fiscal year. You get a very different look if you group the quarters by fiscal years from July-June, instead of calendar years of January-December. The figure below shows what you get in the shifted calendar. The market looks like it's just recovering in 2011 after a U-shaped two-year recession. And what growth in the last 12 months! About 40% over the previous 12.
The last figure shows the aggregated company data by quarter. Here it is clear that it was V-shaped at that scale.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Summer read: Euro report on photonics
Looking for some good summer reading last week at the beach in Santa Barbara, I read through the final report on the economic impact of photonics in Europe. Okay, I did no such thing, but being a recovering policy wonk in Washington DC, I did look through. Here's the lowdown for those of you who won't read it themselves.
First, the motivation and impact of the report. The fundamental motive was to justify to the European Commission its own spending on photonics projects. The many EC agencies fight for money just like everyone else, and the interest in the report actually came from the Commission, but working with Photonics21. It so happens that it benefits the photonics community too, by putting a stake in the ground. And one thing it is, is thorough. It will be hard for someone to prove it wrong.
The impact: 10% of the economy, or is it 100%? The researchers did some nice work, looking at the impact of photonics on jobs and national product. One major finding is that photonics technologies impact about 10% of the European economy, generated by a Euro photonics market of nearly 60 billion euros (21% of the world market) and employing 290,000 people.
I can't help but note here that an enabling technology like photonics can be said to underpin the entire economy in one way or the other. Who doesn't use a display or long-haul fiber optics somewhere in their work? It's like clean water or electricity, the value is so fundamental. But that claim, while true, becomes immediately useless and the report came up with a more useful number.
There is a lot in the report about leverage and improving competitiveness. For example, advances in LEDs and solar cells will have a large impact on Europe at many levels, from photonics jobs to national energy policies. When you work everything out, the most leverage is not necessarily where you might think it is. And there is also a lot on improving European competitiveness, like trying to narrow the Valley of Death of commercialization, help small businesses, stuff like that.
My view is that the real value of photonics to Europe is in high-value systems, not so much the components. The report notes that Europe has gaps in volume manufacturing in such key photonics products as displays and image sensors. I may be wrong, but this seems to be a particularly European lament. Not that American companies aren't crying about manufacturing moving to China, but it's not seen here as an existential problem for the photonics industry. After all, Apple is beating the pants off competitors and keeping the margin. Yet, it assembles its products in Asia. As do many photonics companies.
Europe's real strength in photonics, as in the U.S., comes from using photonics in high value applications, like laser-based machine tools, ophthalmic diagnostic and treatment systems, military systems, advanced sensors, telecom and datacom systems, and semiconductor lithography. These all require very deep knowledge of photonics, but many times use components sourced from other countries (sometimes through a subsidiary).
This is a very deep topic, one that I will return to in a future post. For one thing, it raises a question: when companies are global and commoditized, who captures the value of photonics? Stockholders? Customers? The report looks at two: job-holders and the regional economy.
First, the motivation and impact of the report. The fundamental motive was to justify to the European Commission its own spending on photonics projects. The many EC agencies fight for money just like everyone else, and the interest in the report actually came from the Commission, but working with Photonics21. It so happens that it benefits the photonics community too, by putting a stake in the ground. And one thing it is, is thorough. It will be hard for someone to prove it wrong.
The impact: 10% of the economy, or is it 100%? The researchers did some nice work, looking at the impact of photonics on jobs and national product. One major finding is that photonics technologies impact about 10% of the European economy, generated by a Euro photonics market of nearly 60 billion euros (21% of the world market) and employing 290,000 people.
I can't help but note here that an enabling technology like photonics can be said to underpin the entire economy in one way or the other. Who doesn't use a display or long-haul fiber optics somewhere in their work? It's like clean water or electricity, the value is so fundamental. But that claim, while true, becomes immediately useless and the report came up with a more useful number.
There is a lot in the report about leverage and improving competitiveness. For example, advances in LEDs and solar cells will have a large impact on Europe at many levels, from photonics jobs to national energy policies. When you work everything out, the most leverage is not necessarily where you might think it is. And there is also a lot on improving European competitiveness, like trying to narrow the Valley of Death of commercialization, help small businesses, stuff like that.
My view is that the real value of photonics to Europe is in high-value systems, not so much the components. The report notes that Europe has gaps in volume manufacturing in such key photonics products as displays and image sensors. I may be wrong, but this seems to be a particularly European lament. Not that American companies aren't crying about manufacturing moving to China, but it's not seen here as an existential problem for the photonics industry. After all, Apple is beating the pants off competitors and keeping the margin. Yet, it assembles its products in Asia. As do many photonics companies.
Europe's real strength in photonics, as in the U.S., comes from using photonics in high value applications, like laser-based machine tools, ophthalmic diagnostic and treatment systems, military systems, advanced sensors, telecom and datacom systems, and semiconductor lithography. These all require very deep knowledge of photonics, but many times use components sourced from other countries (sometimes through a subsidiary).
This is a very deep topic, one that I will return to in a future post. For one thing, it raises a question: when companies are global and commoditized, who captures the value of photonics? Stockholders? Customers? The report looks at two: job-holders and the regional economy.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
LED drivers--a $2 billion photonics market
With all of us opto folks going gaga over the $10+ billion LED market, stop and consider that the LED driver IC market is a sweet $2 billion, and growing at 12% compounded annually. And I'm going to say it: drivers is a photonics market too.
OK, I said it. Electronics is photonics too. I'm stretching things a bit, since the suppliers of LED driver ICs are companies like Texas Instruments, Maxim, Analog Devices, and Macroblock who don't know or care about photons. They do know a lot about hand-crafted analog circuit designs and specialty fab processes that enable circuits tolerant to high-voltages--the kind that drive long LED strings in display backlights.
But good LED design optimizes the entire circuit for efficiency, reliability, LED uniformity, and many other specs. We call the circuit--minus the LEDs themselves--the driver. It may include zero, one, or multiple ICs for the purpose.
Opto people, like myself, tend to think that there is nothing interesting in the system apart from the quantum mechanics of electron-hole recombination and fancy MOCVD epitaxial growth. But when product designers take the electronics for granted, system performance is notoriously terrible, and that's bad for the whole LED industry. Likewise, electronics designers tend to take the LED for granted, but LEDs are requiring surprisingly novel and sophisticated circuits. The only way to achieve widespread LED lighting is if electronics designers innovate enough to meet cost and performance goals. Fortunately, there are those out there who can. Look for example at companies like Exclara, iWatt, Luxera, and Lynk Labs, to name a few.
The boundary between electronics and photonics is also fuzzy for lightwave transceivers. The laser and detector in a transceiver are typically very cheap, so much of the value is in the electronics: driver and receiver, clock recovery, and so on inside the module, not to mention all the higher level routing and control elsewhere on the board.
In imaging, it is even more dramatic. The detector array is sophisticated, but the image processing electronics takes it further, correcting optical limitations and even adjusting focus after the fact. The point is not that the electronics helps the optics, but that optical science actually resides in the electronics, often on the same chip as the sensor array.
I'll get back to the LED driver market again, but for now, remember: Electronics can be photonics too.
OK, I said it. Electronics is photonics too. I'm stretching things a bit, since the suppliers of LED driver ICs are companies like Texas Instruments, Maxim, Analog Devices, and Macroblock who don't know or care about photons. They do know a lot about hand-crafted analog circuit designs and specialty fab processes that enable circuits tolerant to high-voltages--the kind that drive long LED strings in display backlights.
But good LED design optimizes the entire circuit for efficiency, reliability, LED uniformity, and many other specs. We call the circuit--minus the LEDs themselves--the driver. It may include zero, one, or multiple ICs for the purpose.
Opto people, like myself, tend to think that there is nothing interesting in the system apart from the quantum mechanics of electron-hole recombination and fancy MOCVD epitaxial growth. But when product designers take the electronics for granted, system performance is notoriously terrible, and that's bad for the whole LED industry. Likewise, electronics designers tend to take the LED for granted, but LEDs are requiring surprisingly novel and sophisticated circuits. The only way to achieve widespread LED lighting is if electronics designers innovate enough to meet cost and performance goals. Fortunately, there are those out there who can. Look for example at companies like Exclara, iWatt, Luxera, and Lynk Labs, to name a few.
The boundary between electronics and photonics is also fuzzy for lightwave transceivers. The laser and detector in a transceiver are typically very cheap, so much of the value is in the electronics: driver and receiver, clock recovery, and so on inside the module, not to mention all the higher level routing and control elsewhere on the board.
In imaging, it is even more dramatic. The detector array is sophisticated, but the image processing electronics takes it further, correcting optical limitations and even adjusting focus after the fact. The point is not that the electronics helps the optics, but that optical science actually resides in the electronics, often on the same chip as the sensor array.
I'll get back to the LED driver market again, but for now, remember: Electronics can be photonics too.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Munich Part 2--Consolidation?
A question that comes up at every big industry event is, when is the laser industry going to consolidate? It came up in my conversations at Laser Munich last week, and it came up in the CEO Roundtable (for a full video, click here). This time, I posed the question to the CEOs: is there really an argument for consolidation, or is it just code for "let's get these lifestyle companies out of our way so my big company can keep growing."
Their answers were interesting, and were supported in many other discussions I had last week.
Stuart Schoenmann of CVI Melles Griot made the argument that consolidation across products produces economies of scale that can enable things you cannot do with smaller companies. Larger scale frees up management to make more optimal and strategic choices, whether it is where it is putting its R & D money or whether to outsource or not.
Ulrich Simon of Carl Zeiss Microimaging argued for consolidation in the vertical direction to own core technologies,: providing advantages that cannot be gained in a more stratified supply chain. Trumpf has often made that argument.IPG has gone that route, too.
David Marks of Qioptiq acknowleged that the industry needs to continue to support small companies, in part for the innovation that they bring. As much as start-ups must seem like spoilers,VCs have funded a lot of innovation that never paid them a penny in return, and the people and IP often wind up in the big companies. There is a lot less of that nowadays, but it still happens.
John Ambroseo of Coherent closed with a rousing argument that the real competition is not other laser companies, but all the other technologies out there--mechanical drills and shears, other medical treatments, other types of sensors. Without consolidation, the laser industry spends inefficiently on redundant R&D, distracting the industry from bigger opportunities.
I've always maintained that consolidation means different things to different people. To me, consolidation is only meaningful in specific market segments. It's when a few competitors have most of the market share. (Consolidation is the process. Concentration is the result.) This can happen when companies consolidate internally, by exiting product lines, but it's often hard to know this from outside. The laser industry is highly fragmented into hundreds of niches. It turns a big laser company into what I call a "confederation of business units. They do gain advantages in scale, to be sure, but it is also more complex to manage. It's hard to manage such big, sprawling companies. It's also hard to grow when you are already a big dog.
Not mentioned was that some segments seem to favor consolidation more than others. This leads into another topic that came up at Laser Munich: is it too late for a company trying to make it big in fiber lasers? I'll address that in a later post.
For other thoughts on consolidation, see:
Fragmentation depends on your point of view
Consolidation, Part 2--Is Oclaro consolidation or redistribution?
Consolidation in the laser market, Part 1--How much is there?
Tom Hausken
Strategies Unlimited
thausken@strategies-u.com
http://www.strategies-u.com/
Their answers were interesting, and were supported in many other discussions I had last week.
Stuart Schoenmann of CVI Melles Griot made the argument that consolidation across products produces economies of scale that can enable things you cannot do with smaller companies. Larger scale frees up management to make more optimal and strategic choices, whether it is where it is putting its R & D money or whether to outsource or not.
Ulrich Simon of Carl Zeiss Microimaging argued for consolidation in the vertical direction to own core technologies,: providing advantages that cannot be gained in a more stratified supply chain. Trumpf has often made that argument.IPG has gone that route, too.
David Marks of Qioptiq acknowleged that the industry needs to continue to support small companies, in part for the innovation that they bring. As much as start-ups must seem like spoilers,VCs have funded a lot of innovation that never paid them a penny in return, and the people and IP often wind up in the big companies. There is a lot less of that nowadays, but it still happens.
John Ambroseo of Coherent closed with a rousing argument that the real competition is not other laser companies, but all the other technologies out there--mechanical drills and shears, other medical treatments, other types of sensors. Without consolidation, the laser industry spends inefficiently on redundant R&D, distracting the industry from bigger opportunities.
I've always maintained that consolidation means different things to different people. To me, consolidation is only meaningful in specific market segments. It's when a few competitors have most of the market share. (Consolidation is the process. Concentration is the result.) This can happen when companies consolidate internally, by exiting product lines, but it's often hard to know this from outside. The laser industry is highly fragmented into hundreds of niches. It turns a big laser company into what I call a "confederation of business units. They do gain advantages in scale, to be sure, but it is also more complex to manage. It's hard to manage such big, sprawling companies. It's also hard to grow when you are already a big dog.
Not mentioned was that some segments seem to favor consolidation more than others. This leads into another topic that came up at Laser Munich: is it too late for a company trying to make it big in fiber lasers? I'll address that in a later post.
For other thoughts on consolidation, see:
Fragmentation depends on your point of view
Consolidation, Part 2--Is Oclaro consolidation or redistribution?
Consolidation in the laser market, Part 1--How much is there?
Tom Hausken
Strategies Unlimited
thausken@strategies-u.com
http://www.strategies-u.com/
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Laser Munich Part 1--German mood lifts all
You can tell that Germany is doing well these days just from going to Laser Munich. And not just Germany. Everyone from Coherent, IPG, and JDSU are all smiles these days. In fact, everyone I met at Laser Munich this week was in a great mood.Of course, it helps that the beer starts flowing in the booths at 5:00 sharp. Even better!
The German economy didn't fare as poorly in the financial crisis as other major countries, and it recovered better and more quickly.German unemployment is now the lowest since reunification 20 years ago. This recovery has lifted German companies, most notably Trumpf and Rofin-Sinar, but many others too.(Read about it from David Belforte, here.)Laser sales are back to 2008 levels.The good cheer came out in the CEO Roundtable: what did photonics companies do right that they fared so well in the recession?
My standard answers are:
1.China.
2.Semiconductors and electronics (think iPads and smartphones)
3.The jobless recovery--buying new laser systems instead of hiring workers.
4.Did I mention China?
5.Oh and yes, this time photonics companies reacted quickly.
These factors affect some companies more than others,but enough is happening that it gets spread around. That said, there was the usual grumbling that there are too many competitors. More on that in a later post.
The Munich venue is great, but what if it were somewhere else? Stuart Schoenmann of CVI Melles Griot kept it real in the CEO Roundtable when he gave his respects to Japan.The Japanese economy was hit with not one, but two crises: first the financial crisis and now the tsunami/nuclear crisis.The latter didn't take much production out of service, but it did upset the supply chain. Moreover, the Japanese stock market has never recovered to the peak of 1990, not even close.And that was 21 years ago.
And it's not just Japan that has been hit. I don't know about you, but every company I know was cut to the bone.More on that in a later post too.
But that's somewhere else. Here, it felt like a "normal" show. No fads. No gossip. Just a good mood and good beer.
Tom Hausken
thausken@strategies-u.com
http://www.strategies-u.com/
The German economy didn't fare as poorly in the financial crisis as other major countries, and it recovered better and more quickly.German unemployment is now the lowest since reunification 20 years ago. This recovery has lifted German companies, most notably Trumpf and Rofin-Sinar, but many others too.(Read about it from David Belforte, here.)Laser sales are back to 2008 levels.The good cheer came out in the CEO Roundtable: what did photonics companies do right that they fared so well in the recession?
My standard answers are:
1.China.
2.Semiconductors and electronics (think iPads and smartphones)
3.The jobless recovery--buying new laser systems instead of hiring workers.
4.Did I mention China?
5.Oh and yes, this time photonics companies reacted quickly.
These factors affect some companies more than others,but enough is happening that it gets spread around. That said, there was the usual grumbling that there are too many competitors. More on that in a later post.
The Munich venue is great, but what if it were somewhere else? Stuart Schoenmann of CVI Melles Griot kept it real in the CEO Roundtable when he gave his respects to Japan.The Japanese economy was hit with not one, but two crises: first the financial crisis and now the tsunami/nuclear crisis.The latter didn't take much production out of service, but it did upset the supply chain. Moreover, the Japanese stock market has never recovered to the peak of 1990, not even close.And that was 21 years ago.
And it's not just Japan that has been hit. I don't know about you, but every company I know was cut to the bone.More on that in a later post too.
But that's somewhere else. Here, it felt like a "normal" show. No fads. No gossip. Just a good mood and good beer.
Tom Hausken
thausken@strategies-u.com
http://www.strategies-u.com/
Friday, May 6, 2011
A big optics/vision opportunity: service robots
Looking for a new opportunity in optics and vision systems? Check out this new market report on vision for service robots from my colleagues at Vision Systems Design. This is a market set to take off. To give you an idea, with industrial robot unit sales in the tens of thousands per year, service robots could potentially sell in the millions.
Most robots today are not the futuristic kind we remember from the Jetsons or the somewhat creepy Actroid kind commercialized in Japan.. An industrial robots today is basically just factory automation with an articulating arm that makes it seem like a robot.
A service robot is more like the more futuristic version--mobile, uncontained, and diverse--but not trying to act human, like some insecure, fawning android. More precisely, it operates semi- or fully-autonomously to perform service functions, excluding manufacturing. An industrial robot can be a service robot too, if it meets this definition.
Examples of service robots include: UAVs, explosive or hazard disposal, automating cow milking, driver assistance, inspection and maintenance of hard-to-reach places, medical rehabilitation, surgery, and scientific exploration. The UAV is the biggest market opportunity, becuase of the sophistication involved. There are many smaller, fast growing segments.
This is a big deal for photonics because most service robots requrie machine vision of some kind. This means the use of structured light (like what is used in the Microsoft Kinect), time-of-flight (like what is used in virtual keyboards), LIDAR, and so forth. This has to be fused with other technologies, like GPS, radar, sonar, and inertial guidance. For more sophisticated robots, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is critical to build maps of unknown environments or to update maps within known environments, while at the same time keeping track of the current location of the robot.
The technology is still emerging and remains to be worked out. That means lots of hardware and software, and pretty deep stuff. Imagine that the system doesn't necessarily need to "see" things the way we do--it just has to get the information it needs from its sensors.
For more information on the report, click here.
Most robots today are not the futuristic kind we remember from the Jetsons or the somewhat creepy Actroid kind commercialized in Japan.. An industrial robots today is basically just factory automation with an articulating arm that makes it seem like a robot.
A service robot is more like the more futuristic version--mobile, uncontained, and diverse--but not trying to act human, like some insecure, fawning android. More precisely, it operates semi- or fully-autonomously to perform service functions, excluding manufacturing. An industrial robot can be a service robot too, if it meets this definition.
Examples of service robots include: UAVs, explosive or hazard disposal, automating cow milking, driver assistance, inspection and maintenance of hard-to-reach places, medical rehabilitation, surgery, and scientific exploration. The UAV is the biggest market opportunity, becuase of the sophistication involved. There are many smaller, fast growing segments.
This is a big deal for photonics because most service robots requrie machine vision of some kind. This means the use of structured light (like what is used in the Microsoft Kinect), time-of-flight (like what is used in virtual keyboards), LIDAR, and so forth. This has to be fused with other technologies, like GPS, radar, sonar, and inertial guidance. For more sophisticated robots, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is critical to build maps of unknown environments or to update maps within known environments, while at the same time keeping track of the current location of the robot.
The technology is still emerging and remains to be worked out. That means lots of hardware and software, and pretty deep stuff. Imagine that the system doesn't necessarily need to "see" things the way we do--it just has to get the information it needs from its sensors.
For more information on the report, click here.
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