The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA) in Washington released its annual “Global Optoelectronics Industry Market Report and Forecast.” This 410-page report includes market data and forecasts for nearly all segments of the optoelectronics industry including chapters on diode and nondiode lasers, high-brightness (HB) LEDs, displays and related technologies, telecommunications and broadband, optical communications, image sensors, medical and health applications, UV materials, green LEDs and light extraction, optoelectronic nanotechnology, photovoltaic markets, defense and security, fiber sensors, and a chapter on VC investment in the field.

“Telecom and datacom markets have strengthened in 2006,” notes Dr. Michael Lebby, president and chief executive officer of OIDA. “But the real excitement is that optoelectronics components are beginning to be utilized in high-volume consumer-, entertainment-, and computing-based products. At OIDA, we will study this phenomenon next year on April 3-4 at an OIDA forum on consumer optoelectronics.” Some observations from this year’s report include:

• consumer and entertainment optoelectronics are keeping up a strong momentum driven by liquid-crystal displays (LCD) in TVs and PDAs/mobile devices;
• LCDs account for more than 70 percent of the optical components industry-with continuing growth trend;
• solar cells and display modules exhibited the strongest segment growth in 2005, 24 and 19 percent, respectively;
• image sensors and HB LEDs now own 60 percent of the global optoelectronics sources and detectors market; and
• the 405 nm blue-laser market is growing slower than expected due to technical difficulties with laser specifications and alignment tolerance.

OIDA’s Global Optoelectronics Industry Market Report and Forecast will be distributed to members now and will be available for purchase by nonmembers on OIDA’s Web site in May 2007.

For more information, visit www.oida.org.