Optoelectronics

3D imaging and autofocus drive the IR light source market

19th April 2017
Alice Matthews
0

It is believed that 3D imaging, gas sensing and autofocus will fuel the Infra-Red (IR) light source market. The More than Moore market research and strategy consulting company, Yole Développement (Yole), has announced a $1.5bn opportunity in 2022 in multiple applications and potentially $3.8bn in 2027. “Some applications will generate large revenues and strong growth rates during the next five years,” explained Pars Mukish, Business Unit Manager at Yole.

“Some others such as gas sensors, eye tracking systems or gesture recognition systems are just emerging and expected to boom in the next ten years,” he continued.

Yole has presented its vision of the IR light source market with a new report titled IR LEDs & Lasers: technology, applications & industry trends. Under this new market and technology analysis, Yole’s analysts enlarge their expertise toward the solid-state lighting technologies and are offering an in-depth analysis of all IR light source applications. This report includes basic principles, technology, trends, key players, and market size. It also highlights the global landscape for IR light sources, including classification of applications by wavelength, market segment and function. Moreover the consulting company proposes detailed market forecasts based on these classifications and with complementary analysis by light source for LEDs, edge-emitting lasers and VCSELs.

What is driving the IR light sources industry? Who is leading this industry? What are the key technologies? What are the main technical trends for IR light sources integration?

The market for LED and laser IR light sources is not new, but has evolved rapidly with the SSL recent development. Initially developed for optical communication applications, these technologies, mostly IR LEDs, started to be integrated into consumer applications like remote controls in the 1980s. Next, the market was driven forward by night vision applications such as surveillance cameras. But it’s only recently, with the development of smartphones, that IR LEDs and lasers have come back to prominence. “Now, the market is set for growth for the next ten years,” confirmed Mukish.

Today, these technologies are part of a new revolution, still driven by smartphone applications. Integration of breakthrough functionalities such as 3D imaging, autofocus, iris and face recognition is triggering a strong market pull for efficient, miniaturised and complex IR illumination.

“This trend will also create strong market opportunities for IR lasers, mostly VCSELs,” commented Pierrick Boulay, Technology and Market Analyst at Yole. “It allow more coherent and directional light than IR LEDs."

In this context, Yole is expecting the IR light source market to grow from around $450m in 2016 to around $1,550m in 2022 with a 22.7% CAGR during this period.

In addition, there are also several other applications that are emerging and for which a market boom is likely to happen in the next ten years. These include gas sensors, LIDARs, driver monitoring systems and remote patient monitoring sensors. Yole is expecting this second wave of new applications to propel the IR light source market to around $3,800m in 2027.

The IR LED market is perceived as a potential new ‘blue ocean’ with attractive opportunities for LED players. According to Yole’s report, more than 40 manufacturers are involved in IR LEDs and most ot them are located in China and Taiwan. Today, Osram and Vishay still lead the field. However some players, like Everlight or Epistar would like benefit from this opportunity and penetrate step by step the market with large investments.

“Since few years, the IR LED industry has strongly grown due to strong price pressure on visible LEDs,” commented Pierrick Boulay from Yole. “In the future, we expect more traditional LED manufacturers to try entering this business!”

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