News

1 April 2009

 

Industrial laser sales to fall 32% to 2004 levels this year

If sales stay at current levels, then the industrial laser market will fall 32% in 2009 (to the same level as 2004), forecasts market research firm Strategies Unlimited in its report ‘ Fiber and Industrial Laser Market Review and Forecast—2009’, which includes coverage of thin-disk lasers, diode-pumped solid-state lasers (DPSSL), lamp-pumped solid- state lasers (LPSSLs), and carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers.

By 2013, sales will return to 2008 levels, helped by military, biomedical instruments, and energy-related applications. Many materials-processing applications (spanning laser marking to metal cutting and welding) will take longer to recover. In contrast, fiber-laser suppliers will see a shallower decline of 24% to $230m in 2009, and experience faster recovery than other types of lasers. However, if the recession deepens or if suppliers engage in a desperate price war, 2009 sales will fall further.

While the industrial laser sector is highly fragmented, the top 10 suppliers earn about 86% of revenues (with Coherent Inc of Santa Clara, CA, USA and TRUMPF of Ditzingen, Germany remaining top), while many dozens of small suppliers share less than 5% of the market.

Although IPG Photonics of Oxford, MA, USA continues to dominate the fiber-laser segment, in second- half 2008 more than 30 firms were making complete fiber-laser products, as the market reached almost $300m for 2008. Although the fiber-laser sector is not one to make rapid changes, many application trends are becoming clearer during the current period of transition, points out Strategies Unlimited. The recession is so severe that every supplier will be forced to pick and choose the laser businesses in which it wants to continue to compete. Afterward, not only will there be fewer players, but the remaining players will play in fewer niches.

“The recession breaks a nearly unbroken string of growth for both fiber lasers and industrial lasers in general,” says Tom Hausken, director of components research at Strategies Unlimited. “For the next several years the business will appear less like a steady, growing, still-young market and more like a cyclic one, more typical of mature capital markets,” he concludes.

Search: Fiber lasers

Visit: www.strategies-u.com