Laserati

The ultrafast laser market will reach about $260 million in 2008, with healthy growth expected through to 2012 according to analyst Strategies Unlimited.

I have noticed in previous laser conferences that there are more and more companies producing on ultrafast fiber lasers. A recent report by Strategies Unlimited is on this topic. The report is not freely available. But we can know something from this interview from optics.org. The interview article is free, but you have to register. Following is the part that is most interesting to me.

How does the ultrafast market sustain such a large number of players?

There are now 38 companies offering an ultrafast laser product. In my opinion, that's a bit too many, especially when you consider that Coherent and Newport have the dominant market shares today. It is a lot more than I expected when we started looking into this project, but a lot of companies survive by serving a niche and with very tight financing. Many of them do this by offering ultrafast as an extension of their other pulsed laser products. What is surprising is how many of these little companies have been around for many years. Only a very few can be considered start-up companies entirely focused on ultrafast.

Do you expect to see new entrants and what do they have to do to survive?

When it comes to the laser business, you always see new entrants, but the venture-funded start-up is a very tough way to go, because the application development is so slow. The supplier must find a customer to design the laser into a system, and then the system has to be sold to end users. In between, there may be regulatory hurdles and extensive qualifications. It's easier to do if the laser supplier has a tight budget, lots of patience and maybe some other products already selling.

Do you expect to see any consolidation?

"Consolidation" is not the word that comes to my mind, at least not in the sense of a significant reduction in the number of suppliers. There are no strong economies of scale in the ultrafast business that would force that. The intellectual property is critical, though, so there certainly will be some licensing and even acquisitions to get access to that. I don't consider that consolidation - that is just the usual business of horse trading.