Information about the current technologogical status and developments providing the basis for established and emerging markets is presented under TECHNOLOGY.
Today’s Market
Historically superconductor technology was first utilized in purely performance-driven sectors i.e. in science, research and technological development (RTD), and in military applications. In a next phase, medical applications where competition from non-superconducting devices is weak, were opened up. Almost all of today’s superconducting products still use LTS materials. So far, these markets are mostly for magnets ranging from small magnets for university research to enormous systems for large laboratory facilities. The biggest current market is for magnets used in medical diagnosis, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). As can be seen in the graph, both fields, RTD and MRI, together account for most of today’s overall market for components, systems and services which was about 4 B€ worldwide in 2007. Still some modest growth rates are expected for these well established businesses, which may reach about 4.5 B€ in 2013. Although contributions from HTS are anticipated to grow, LTS will continue to play the dominant role in these fields.
Emerging New Businesses
In contrast to these traditional fields, there are some exciting new businesses which will mostly be based on new superconducting materials, but also on new system designs. The highly cost-competitive commercial markets of energy, information and communication, industrial processing and transportation are addressed in addition to new medical applications. In the graph these emerging new businesses are summarized under large scale and electronics applications. Further improvement of price-performances is needed to promote the commercial deployment of superconductor technologies in these fields. Moreover, references are needed from pilot customers, production facilities have to be ramped up, the market has to be actively developed and the related costs present another level of capital investment. We expect that around the end of this decade system developments and cost reductions for components will prepare the economical basis for these new fields. We estimate that their growing contributions to the world market will exceed 0.6 B€ in 2013.
The Perspective
As indicated in the table, LTS contributions are predicted to continue their steady growth with a total market share of about 4.6 B€ in 2013. Estimates for HTS are in the range of 0.5 B€ for 2013. They are based on the forecast that several new businesses will start off around the end of this decade. We estimate that in the long term they may well reach the same size as the established businesses. In the well established businesses the EU market share is nearly half of the total world market today, whereas the future EU share of value chains in the new fields is currently expected to be considerably smaller. More information about the perspectives for European industry may be found at INDUSTRY.
Market figures represent the annual sales of materials, components and (sub-) systems providing a specific technical function for which superconductivity is indispensable. All after sales services, warranties and related maintenance as well as commercial orders and pre-commercial orders related to RTD activities, prototype testing and field tests, are included.
