Laser Focus World - January 2015

Raytheon recently won an $11 million contract for a Humvee-mounted DEW and Boeing’s thin-disk laser technology has officially achieved DEW status with its 30 k W output. Curran says that although the current market outlook is flat as the number of weapons platforms has been reduced, he sees great long-term potential for DEWs as military spending rises.

Entertainment and displays

In late 2013, Christie (Cypress, CA) was chosen to supply and install the world’s first commercial digital laser projector at the Seattle Cinerama Theatre (although Moody Gardens in Galveston, TX said it was the first to install a Christie 6P laser projector for its D3D audience). Cinerama moviegoers attending the November 20, 2014 screening of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I” were illuminated by the 4K, 60,000 lumen, 6P dual-head projector and tweeted various accolades, although most of them commented on the beer and chocolate popcorn rather than picture quality. Nonetheless, sessions such as “The Digital Cinema Laser Battle” at InfoComm 2014 saw nothing but future growth in this lumen-rich, high-reliability, low-con- sumable-cost, and energy efficient laser entertainment industry.

“This was a very exciting year for lasers,” says Greg Niven, Necsel (Milpitas, CA) VP of sales and marketing and chair of the Laser Illuminated Projector Association (LIPA; San Jose, CA).

“It’s not often that we get to witness the launch of a completely
new market segment that will literally get millions of eyeballs
seeing high-power visible lasers via both large-venue cinema
projectors and low-lumen office data projectors. This is just the
beginning of a variety of new laser-based lighting applications.”
As laser cinema continues its penetration and laser tag are-
nas multiply, laser light show revenues continue their solid
growth. In fact, many municipalities are considering “snuff-
ing out” their polluting, solid-waste-generating fireworks dis-
plays in favor of laser light shows. With all the laser fun to be
had, we forecast laser sales for entertainment and display ap-
plications to grow nearly 11% to $197 million in 2015.

Image recording

From 2013 to 2018, CCS Insight (Slough, England) says printer shipments will increase from 106 million to 124 million units (compound annual growth rate of 3.1%), with 50% of those printers being multifunction inkjet varieties. The fastest-grow-ing printer type is laser multifunction units, rising to 30 million decline, and stiff price competition erodes the enthusiasm. For 2015, we forecast lasers used for image recording applications to drop slightly from $67 million in 2014 to $66 million.

Image recording & printing

This category includes lasers for commercial pre-press systems and photofinishing, as well as conventional laser printers for consumer and commercial applications.

Sales of diode lasers used in commercial printing are in decline. The creation of application stores and audio and video streaming to the Cloud have largely reduced the need for physical image storage. Printing for consumer packaging requirements continues to keep this segment afloat, although not thriving.

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Year 65

67

69

67

66Revenues (US$M)

Source: Strategies Unlimited

Entertainment & displays

Includes lasers used for light shows, games, digital cinema, front and rear projectors, picoprojectors, and laser pointers.

The majority of laser revenue in this segment is for laser light shows, and this business has been booming the last few years. Faster galvanometers, lower-cost diode lasers in a multitude of colors, and better safety measures have made laser light show hardware available to more applications at much lower costs.

Outside of light shows, a few other laser display applications are just in their infancy. Laser light sources for movie projection are just now becoming commercially available, and many laser-powered theaters are set to open this year. For business projectors and even some residential high-end projection TVs, lasers have been used for several years now. Although small, laser usage is growing.