ABSTRACT
Until recently the industrial laser market was dominated by the traditional laser technologies of the last century, namely, gas lasers such as CO2 and solid-state lasers based on diode-pumped Nd:YAG crystals. These laser technologies were invented and optimized in the 1960s [1,2], becoming scientic research tools in the 1970s, and deployed as an industrial tool in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, the total annual industrial laser market is ∼$2.6B (2014) [3]. The commercialization of the high-power ber laser in the last decade is the rst new laser technology to challenge the dominance of these traditional laser technologies. The market for ber lasers was less than $100 M in 2005 but grew by 50% per year throughout most of the last decade. Indeed, it was only tracked as an individual laser segment from 2007, previously counting as part of the overall solid-state laser category. The annual sales of ber lasers was ∼$1B in 2014, over a third of the total industrial laser market share.
