Camera unobscura
Posted: February 2, 2012 Filed under: business, culture, market research, optics, photonics, published work, science | Tags: camera phones, CMOS sensors, LED flash, liquid lenses, Lytro, market research, OmniVision, Optical Society, optics, Optics and Photonics News, Osram Opto, plenoptic camera, Raytrix, Varioptic, wafer level optics Leave a comment »A while ago I asked a market analyst if he could identify the magic ingredient that changed camera phones from a niche technology into ubiquitous consumables, assuming he’d say it happened when engineers worked out how to get enough megapixels into the things to make the photographs actually worth looking at.
His answer was Facebook. That and consumer willingness to embrace data plans that let people successfully send pictures without going bankrupt or expiring from boredom while they were about it.
This fact came up while researching an article on camera phone optics for The Optical Society. Another nugget was that one of the foremost developers of a particular technology that seemed tailor-made to suit the camera phone sector, a company I’ve been writing about in one way or another for years, had withdrawn from the fray while I wasn’t looking, brought low by a licensing strategy that looked like exactly the right idea on paper.
Point being: becoming ubiquitous is a bruising business. But it certainly pushes technology forwards.
My feature about some of the optics technology built into camera phones is the cover story of the February issue of the OSA’s Optics and Photonics News, and is also currently an open-access article on their web site.
Ride that switchback
Posted: October 30, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, market research, optics, photonics, published work | Tags: lasers, longbow research, market research, optics, Optics.org, photonics Leave a comment »Three months ago the US laser sector was pondering the need to stock up on canned food and shotguns, but the sky remains un-fallen for the only reason that matters: on the whole demand has failed to collapse.
There’s a large pile of caveats. Concentrating on the year-on-year figures helps avoid the headache that reading the sequential numbers causes; heavy industry is still more inclined to put money on the table than the technology sector; exporters will fret that the Eurozone and US economies are heading in different directions again, although probably not as much as Europeans will. But most vendors are still optimistic, the latest stage of the ride that’s as unrelenting for them as it is for the analysts asking about it.
So I asked an analyst about it. The latest of my regular chats with Mark Douglass of Longbow Research about what’s going on is now posted online at Optics.org.
Summer of discontent
Posted: August 14, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, market research, optics, photonics, published work | Tags: economics, lasers, longbow research, market research, Optics.org, photonics, second quarter 2011 Leave a comment »So the unalloyed good news didn’t stay pure for long. In April the US optics and laser sector was not only happy to find itself recovering, but daring to use words like “optimistic” and “robust.” Since then: complete mayhem.
I spoke to Mark Douglass of Longbow Research for Optics.org, and discussed why the clouds were gathering in July even before the storm broke in August. This time it includes words like “clear as mud.”
Optics and Photonics News catch-up
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, optics, photonics, published work, science | Tags: European Commission, Optical Society of America, Optics and Photonics News, Photonics21, science funding, Technology Innovation Centres, Technology Strategy Board Leave a comment »Two articles of mine have been in issues of Optics and Photonics News recently:
Sailing in Stormy Seas (April 2011) dug into the vexed question of UK science funding, an area where the Technology Strategy Board is making a valiant effort to square the impossible circle. That currently includes spreading its funds over a number of new innovation centres, one of which might end up being dedicated to photonics.
A Bright Future For Photonics21 (June 2011) assessed the success Europe’s photonics community has achieved by acting in unison for maximum political impact. The Photonics21 group has persuaded the European Commission to designate photonics as a Key Enabling Technology, with consequent opening of doors and federal wallets. Now the companies have to deliver.
Both available in print and online, for now to OSA members.
Cheery prospects
Posted: April 26, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, market research, photonics, published work | Tags: IPG, laser, Longbow, survey, Trumpf Leave a comment »Skepticism dies hard, but not many folks in the US laser industry are still prepared to frown in public about the economy. For the first time in a long time, not a single vendor asked about their current fortunes by Longbow Research felt that demand was worse than it was twelve months ago.
Which is not the same thing as everyone actually being better off, but still. My regular chats with Mark Douglass of Longbow for Optics.org have been on an upward swing of optimism lately, and the latest one is pretty much unalloyed good news. Especially if you happen to manufacture fiber lasers for a living.
TeraDiode – diode lasers off the leash
Posted: April 18, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, photonics, published work, science | Tags: cutting, diode, laser, photonics, TeraDiode, welding Leave a comment »Generating a laser from semiconductor diodes has always been attractively simple, at least compared to getting one out of exotic rare-earth crystals or gas mixtures instead. Cheaper too, relatively speaking. But the beams they produce have tended to be low in power or quality, or both.
The holy grail has been for direct-diode lasers to have either the muscle for serious materials processing work, or the finesse for medical and imaging applications. TeraDiode thinks it has achieved both, and proved the point by slicing through the thickest piece of metal a direct-diode system has cut to date. They explained some of the secret over at Optics.org, and outlined why it might open up a market worth a cool $2 billion.
Biolase boardroom brouhaha
Posted: April 13, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, medical, photonics, published work, science | Tags: business, photonics, published work Leave a comment »Biolase is based in California, developed the first laser systems approved for a variety of dental procedures, and is now moving into ophthalmic and imaging applications. That’s one side of the story.
The other involves boardroom upheaval, several trips to the brink of bankruptcy, and a flamboyant CEO with interests in photography, fashion and film producing.
Over at Optics.org I asked Federico Pignatelli about the company’s difficult past and where he thinks it’s going next.
Stormy weather
Posted: April 4, 2011 Filed under: business, lasers, photonics, published work, science Leave a comment »Common ground is hard to come by on the subject of UK government spending cuts, but many think that the country’s science and technology sector could have fared much worse than it did. Interested parties from the optics industry in Britain and Europe told me why the sky shook a bit but didn’t fall on their sector, for an article in the April print edition of Optics & Photonics News. Chances are that some of their colleagues in the arts will have trouble feeling the same way.
