2017 was a bumper year for the green laser pointer industry. Many areas performed well, and some performed particularly well. What about 2018? Is 2017’s performance just a bubble? Let’s take a look at the laser segment that performed well in 2017 and the performance this year.
First look at OLED screens for mobile devices. Many new OLED displays are great for the industry (probably not for LCD manufacturers), but they quickly led to hundreds of millions of OLED smartphone screens, which also created a problem because of the need to set up New factories can meet the needs of these new OLED screens, and these factories require an excimer laser from Coherent to be annealed to produce OLED screens. Because only Coherent is currently able to produce these lasers (each cost may exceed $ 10 million). As demand rose across the board, Coherent also increased its ability to produce these excimer green laser pointers, and its stock price also rose from approximately $ 60 per share in early 2016 to nearly $ 300 per share at the end of 2017. In 2017, Coherent’s stock price was very favorable as a monopoly.
Today, things are quite different. Apple iPhone X sales were poor in 2017, with many of them selling above $ 999. At the same time, most Chinese smartphone makers believe that the added cost of adding OLED screens to their phones is too expensive to support their cost structure. The company that provides disassembly technology for the iPhone claims that the cost of the iPhone X OLED screen with embedded touch sensors is staggering, up to $ 110. And many Chinese smartphones are priced below this price. Chinese manufacturers are currently considering the use of a technology called Mini LED that may rival OLED.
In 2017, another laser technology that benefited from the iPhone X was the vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL). These small lasers are mainly used for communication, green laser pointer radar and other applications, but it is precisely because of their application in iPhone X Face ID that VCSEL achieved sales of several hundred million dollars in 2017. Since then, VCSEL sales have not been as good as before. As mentioned above, although iPhone X sales have fallen, Apple seems to be promising to continue using the technology on future iPhone and iPad models. In December 2017, Apple invested $ 390 million in Finisar, which will increase Finisar’s R & D investment and parts production in order to provide Apple with VCSELs. In March 2018, Lumentum acquired Oclaro, partly to strengthen its production of optical products. Capabilities such as Apple’s VCSEL Face ID sensor.