Indeed, in this emerging market, the ideal light emitting de-vice would be lasers thanks to their capability to deliver highly saturated colors in the widest possible gamut. According to Yole Développement, the green laser market will reach about $500 million in 2016 with more than 45 million devices.
Yole’s study provides a complete analysis of the projection applications targeted by the green laser diodes along with key market metrics. It describes the involvement of the major laser device manu-facturers and gives a snapshot of the GaN material industry playground. The report presents the $ and unit values on the 2009-2016 time scale for the green laser diode devices and the related ma-terial market size in 2” equivalent.
Picoprojectors will drive green laser market
The green laser market today is highly segmented in numerous niche applications from medical to military applications and laser shows. Those applications can work with existing Solid State Lasers or the more recent combinations of semiconductor lasers with non linear crystals (SHG: Second Harmonic Generation).
In the emerging market of picoprojectors and other display techniques such as head mounted display (HMD) or head up display (HUD), the ideal light emitting device would be lasers thanks to their capability to deliver highly saturated colors in the widest possible gamut. Additional features are fo-cus-free operation and expected improved wall-plug efficiency which will affect the power consumption for battery operation.
In 2009 however, the first LED based picoprojectors have been available on the marketplace with a slow take-off. No more than 300k units have been sold. The poor brightness (10 lm) for a relative high price might be a reason for this.
In the same year, some impressive progress has been published on the capability to shift the blue laser diodes towards the green wavelength. The direct-emission semiconductor laser should be available in the coming years (2011-2012) to serve the projection display applications.
Green laser diode market size will reach about $500M size by 2016 and should represent more than 45 million devices:
Stand-alone projectors: Yole Développement forecasts this market to really take-off by 2010 with a sales volume in between 0.5 to 1 million units. During this first phase, most of it will be LED-based but the company forecasts 10-20 percent will be laser-based by 2011 and that ratio will grow to 50-75 percent by 2016.
Yole also envisions a natural move from stand-alone to embedded device as the technology will little-by-little be compatible with size and cost constraints.
Cell phone: That market will start late 2010 with high-end devices (Samsung, Android, etc.). Laser-based systems will be slowly implemented along with cost reduction but Yole Développement stays very conservative saying that LED will strongly dominate at least until 2016. According to the small size requirement, direct-emission green laser will be highly recommended.
Media players: That device is the perfect location for embedded pico-projectors. Its ultimate function is to diffuse and share media. There are less cost constraints and size issues com-pared to cell-phone. The boom should occur by 2012 with 2.6 to 5 million units equipped with projection functionality. SHG green lasers should dominate first waiting for direct-emission to be price and performance-compatible.
Camera and camcorder: “There, we forecast a slow market penetration for laser-based technologies as the battery lifetime and cost can become critical parameters. LED technology should dominate in these applications,” says Regis Hamelin, Yole Développement’s Market & Technology Analyst.
Laptop: That is probably the most unclear segment as it is hard to accurately predict about the behavior of consumers: will they go for an all-in-one solution (PC plus projector) with an embedded projection device that will probably be less efficient than desktop projectors? Yole Développement remains very conservative on that application.
Green Laser diode technology: move from SHG to direct emission sources
Only SHG laser diodes are available today on the market place. “Corning, OSRAM and QD Laser hav-ing each their proprietary solution to green light generation. However, given the complex package of these lasers, it seems difficult to reach a reasonable target price. Moreover, these components seem to suffer from a shortage situation”, explains Philippe Roussel, Project Manager at Yole Développement.
Sumitomo SEI, KAAI (UCSB) and OSRAM are the most advanced players for direct-emission green la-ser diodes. If performance meets the minimum requirements for optical power, wall-plug efficiency and lifetime, some of them could possibly offer products in limited quantities as soon as the middle of 2011.
The battle for direct-emission green source will also take place at substrate side where non-polar and semi-polar GaN crystal can play a very positive role in green wavelength emission.Light engine module: A question of light-source cost
The light-engine module, combination of light source and image management (LCD, micro-mirrors, LCOS, etc.) is expected at a target price of $40, this implies a price target of $10 per color, red will not be a problem, however, GaN blue lasers have not reached that price target yet despite their maturi-ty. Green laser will also have to stay in the $10 range to penetrate the market.
LED is a serious competitor
LED and HBLED are serious competitors since some pico-projectors are already announced with Brightness of up to 30 lumens. The capability of lasers to deliver bright images becomes less ‘unique’. If the green and blue lasers from GaN based materials are not delivered in the expected target price, the market share for lasers could be limited to high end products.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.