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.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
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.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Webcast on Mid-IR laser market
Come see our webcast on the market for lasers operating in the mid-infrared range. Well, actually only my part is about the market. The other part will be presented by the esteemed Jeff Hecht about mid-IR laser technologies and trends. The webcast is Wednesday, April 20, and archived for those who are away on Spring vacation.
The figure below shows our market forecast for all mid-IR lasers under 1 kilowatt. I qualified it a bit because big honking kilowatt CO2 lasers comprise a large part of the market. I should also say here that we defined the range for our market report from about 1.8 microns to about 15 microns.
The growth in the figure comes partly from the recovery from the recession, and partly from new growth in military and sensing applications. The new growth is the result of a fortunate convergence of new demands (e.g., for environmental monitoring) and new technology solutions (e.g., GaSb diode lasers, quantum cascade lasers, and new fiber and solid-state lasers).
By the way, we counted over 50 companies making mid-IR lasers of some kind, and most of them are headquartered in North America. None has a significant market share across multiple segments.
The webcast will be produced thanks to the sponsors, ILX Lightwave and IPG Photonics.
The figure below shows our market forecast for all mid-IR lasers under 1 kilowatt. I qualified it a bit because big honking kilowatt CO2 lasers comprise a large part of the market. I should also say here that we defined the range for our market report from about 1.8 microns to about 15 microns.
The growth in the figure comes partly from the recovery from the recession, and partly from new growth in military and sensing applications. The new growth is the result of a fortunate convergence of new demands (e.g., for environmental monitoring) and new technology solutions (e.g., GaSb diode lasers, quantum cascade lasers, and new fiber and solid-state lasers).
By the way, we counted over 50 companies making mid-IR lasers of some kind, and most of them are headquartered in North America. None has a significant market share across multiple segments.
The webcast will be produced thanks to the sponsors, ILX Lightwave and IPG Photonics.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The capex derivative for ICs (Part III)
Last week, I reviewed how solar charts can point up and up, yet the sales of lasers into solar fab tools can languish because they go as the derivative, not directly with sales. In this post, I will show how the same thing happens in semiconductor chips. And for that matter, in any capital equipment business.
The shipments of the end product made from semiconductor fab tools tend to go up and up (the Great Recession notwithstanding) because the world keeps getting bigger. The installed base of tools tracks that trend. (The installed base and chip revenues don't completely march in step, since installed equipment can sit idle, or chip prices can fluctuate.) But the shipments of new tools tracks the 1st derivative of the installed base--you only ship new tools to add capacity or upgrade dated equipment. The laser sales track this trend--the 1st derivative. (It's actually the 2nd derivative of the revenues generated by the electronics, but that's not important here.)
That's shown in the figure below, using actual data for the semiconductor industry over the last several years. The installed base (in units of 10 million 200-mm equivalent wafer starts per month--got that?) ramps up and up. The current recession was an exception, when so many companies closed fabs that the installed base actually declined. But that's rare.
Source: SEMI
While the end product shipments grew and grew, the capex spending itself oscillated dramatically during that time. While the capex business is a sizable business of its own, it isn't really growing so much as it's cyclic. Let that be a lesson.
Of course, we could make similar charts for displays, data storage, and any capital equipment business you like.
The important thing to remember is that the equipment shipments don't scale with the production, they go as the derivative. That's how component sales can languish even as forecasts for a downstream product go up and up.
The shipments of the end product made from semiconductor fab tools tend to go up and up (the Great Recession notwithstanding) because the world keeps getting bigger. The installed base of tools tracks that trend. (The installed base and chip revenues don't completely march in step, since installed equipment can sit idle, or chip prices can fluctuate.) But the shipments of new tools tracks the 1st derivative of the installed base--you only ship new tools to add capacity or upgrade dated equipment. The laser sales track this trend--the 1st derivative. (It's actually the 2nd derivative of the revenues generated by the electronics, but that's not important here.)
That's shown in the figure below, using actual data for the semiconductor industry over the last several years. The installed base (in units of 10 million 200-mm equivalent wafer starts per month--got that?) ramps up and up. The current recession was an exception, when so many companies closed fabs that the installed base actually declined. But that's rare.
Source: SEMI
While the end product shipments grew and grew, the capex spending itself oscillated dramatically during that time. While the capex business is a sizable business of its own, it isn't really growing so much as it's cyclic. Let that be a lesson.
Of course, we could make similar charts for displays, data storage, and any capital equipment business you like.
The important thing to remember is that the equipment shipments don't scale with the production, they go as the derivative. That's how component sales can languish even as forecasts for a downstream product go up and up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)