Disruption in micro materials processing market opens opps for laser suppliers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Sales of low-power lasers for so-called micro materials processing will fall by 40 percent in 2009, but growth will recover in 2010 to exceed $460 million by 2013.

While the market appears at first to be merely scaling to the world economy, the downturn is also likely to disrupt market share in many segments, in a game of musical chairs. These are some of the conclusions of a new report from Strategies Unlimited, the leading market research firm covering optoelectronics markets.

The strongest growth will be in fiber lasers, diode lasers, green lasers, mode-locked (ultrafast) lasers, and lasers for manufacturing solar cells. All segments will see some growth beginning in 2010, but there will be more shuffling of technologies and suppliers than is first apparent, given the evolving situation in these segments.

Coherent, Rofin-Sinar, and GSI Group (including the revenues for Excel Technology for all of 2008) are at the top of the list with over 50 percent of last year’s market share. This is because of the highly fragmented nature of the market.

These companies have strong shares in more than one laser technology in this low-power category, while many companies are highly concentrated in just one category, or their sales are split across other application areas not counted in this study.