Global laser market in 2014 to pick up, laser system sales reached 9.2 billion US dollars, up 6% over the same period last year. It is expected that the optical storage, military and research markets will remain weak in the next few years, but emerging markets such as 3D printing and sapphire cutting will drive market growth. The global laser market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of about 8% between 2015 and 2018.
As a global processing and manufacturing center, China will continue to expand its installed capacity in laser processing equipment. As of the end of 2014, China's laser cutting complete sets of equipment approaching 20,000 units (sets), of which more than 3,000 sets of mainly used in the automotive, marine and aerospace and other fields of high-power equipment, and another 10,000 (sets) Clothing, advertising, handicrafts and electronics industry, small and medium-sized power equipment.
On the market structure, the laser marking machine, laser cutting machine and laser welding machine is China's laser processing equipment in the three main products, accounting for 80% of the total market size. With the development of new technologies and the emergence of new applications, new laser processing equipment market such as 3D printing, laser dicing machine, laser exposure machine, sapphire cutting machine will usher in rapid growth.
In terms of regional structure, China's four major laser industry base (central, the Bohai Sea, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta) has been basically formed. In 2014, the four major base of the GDP of 31.5 billion yuan, accounting for 94% of the industry output value.
