Chinese Industrial Laser Market Up 11%

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Rapid market expansion: global industrial laser market was $4.31 billion in 2017, a year-on-year surge of 26.1%, largely thanks to a boom in new industrial laser business, and is expected to maintain a CAGR of about 7.0% between 2018 and 2022. Specifically, the Chinese industrial laser market was RMB4.5 billion ($670 million by an exchange rate of 1:6.75), up 11% from a year ago and accounting for 15.5% of the global market, and is predicted to sustain a growth rate of over 10% during 2018-2022, as the country has broken technical barriers of industrial laser in recent two years.

Higher market share of new industrial lasers: global fiber laser and diode/excimer laser markets grew by over 30% in 2017. The diode/ excimer laser market expanded by up to 56%, being spurred by its use for phone display. The application of high-power fiber laser in metal cutting squeezed the market share of conventional CO2 laser whose market size contracted by 14% in 2017.

Enhanced production and R&D capabilities of Chinese industrial laser manufacturers: local Chinese producers have developed 10,000W fiber laser, 12,000W fiber laser and 20,000W fiber laser successively since 2013, realizing import substitution in a progressive way.

Competitive landscape: Global industrial laser market pattern has remained stable, occupied primarily by Trumpf, Coherent, IPG, Han's Laser, Huagong Tech and Wuhan Raycus Fiber Laser Technologies. Global top5 manufacturers held a combined market share of over 80% in 2017. To be specific, Trumpf and IPG each seized more than 30%, while Han's Laser, the largest one in China, shared only 6%. Companies continue to enhance market competitiveness through mergers and reorganization, finally leading to a pattern of the bigger ones getting stronger.

As for application, industrial laser is mostly used in material processing, micro-machining and marking, of which material processing is the largest applied field of industrial laser, with a 53.4% share in global market in 2017, a figure projected to climb to 57% in 2022 driven by sheet metal cutting market growth; industrial laser applied in marking has the lowest share and grows at the slowest rate, and it grew 7.3% worldwide in 2017, being primarily incentivized by new applied markets including unique identifier (UID), 2D data matrix code and ID card.