SPIE Photonics West 2020: Business as usual

San Francisco, CA, is the place for photonics professionals to meet early every year. And yes, it was just that in 2020, too, although many wondered whether it was responsible to go there in times of a global virus outbreak. But the halls of the event were crowded with people, and many handshakes were shared, along with copious amounts of hand sanitizer as we disinfected together afterwards.

But concerns were rising. During the Laser & Photonics Marketplace Seminar, John T.C. Lee, President and CEO of MKS Instruments, was asked what he does to be prepared for a potential crisis. “We meet daily,” he said. “The first priority for us is the health and safety of our employees.” Their situation and the internal communication are currently of highest importance. And of course, they are communicating with suppliers and customers to retain all processes.

While it’s uncertain how the virus will influence business and economic development, at the moment, laser analyst Allen Nogee from Strategies Unlimited expects a growth of about 11% for the total laser market. In his presentation at the mentioned Laser & Photonics Marketplace Seminar, he compared numbers for the last three years and derived some expectations for the near future.

For kilowatt lasers in material processing, he observed a substantial decline in average selling prices while the unit numbers actually increased. While this leads to dramatically diminished profits for the laser manufacturers inside and outside China, it leads to wider adoption, which is a good thing. The essential trend here is obvious: Even kilowatt or ultrashort-pulsed lasers become a commodity. Commodification started some years ago with marking lasers and it is introduced now to lasers in the macro- and micro-segments of the market.

Other fields in the market showed substantial revenue growth, such as sensors or VCSELs. Allen Nogee sees lidar coming, and he sees the prices getting down towards the price tag of $100. This became visible also at the SPIE Photonics West tradeshow. Many lidar systems were presented there, and as far as I could see, they go all towards higher integration and lower prices. After all, it is becoming a fist-sized box for a few hundred dollars. Or even smaller and cheaper.

My personal pick of an interesting innovation is reaching out for the stars. Earlier this year, I mentioned upcoming satellite fleets as an interesting chance for photonics markets. Frank Lison from Toptica Projects GmbH pointed me to an unsolved challenge there: “While intersatellite communication has been established with lasers already, a real solution for a ground-based laser uplink is still missing.” He intends to develop such a system based on Toptica’s guide star system. The latter is used to help ground-based telescopes to compensate for atmospheric disturbances. Such optical systems could be used to focus a laser beam to a point as small as 1 cm in a low-Earth orbit. It remains to be seen if this challenge is picked up by other players in the market. But it will be highly relevant for high-volume data transmission, as well as for quantum key distribution.

Even though the epidemic is still spreading and nobody is overlooking its consequences, the mood at SPIE Photonics West was quite optimistic. People were doing business as usual, most of them without the ubiquitous masks we see in the daily press as symbol of the disease. Let's hope that the epidemic in China will soon be over. Our thoughts and wishes are with colleagues like Bo Gu, whom we missed very much at SPIE Photonics West. He was expected to present his annual update on the situation in China at the Marketplace Seminar. All the best, wherever you are! And as soon as possible, we will publish his forecast as well as the other contributions from the seminar here.