By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Nov 8 -- The photonic technology industry revolution should presents a new opportunity for China in the field of optoelectronic semiconductors, pointed out Mi Lei, founding partner of China’s investment institution Casstar (中科创星), at the 2023 Global Key & Core Technology Conference held in Xi’an of northeastern China’s Shaanxi Province.

"For China, it is necessary to quickly make up for shortcomings in the field of electronic chips and also seize the opportunity of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation by investing early in new areas such as photonic chips," he added in a report by China's official Science and Technology Daily.

The photonics industry is the most pioneering, strategic, and fundamental industry for the future. It serves as the foundation and cornerstone of hard technology industries. If the photonics industry is developed, it can drive rapid development in various downstream sectors of hard technology.

China’s first white paper on the photonics industry was released at the conference. It points out that as the "infrastructure" of the fourth technological revolution, information photonics, energy photonics, biophotonics, space photonics, and photonics intelligence are nurturing a group of photon technologies with great potential to ignite major industrial transformations.

With the vigorous development of artificial intelligence, aerospace, intelligent manufacturing, new energy, and life sciences, the photonics industry has also entered a period of rapid growth.

China has the largest number of professionals in the field, and the compound growth rate of the photonics industry from 2012 to 2020 was close to 23%. The global market share of photonics products also increased from 10% in 2005 to 30% in 2019. Currently, China's photonics industry has certain advantages in the basic theoretical research and technological development, according to the Science & Technology Daily.

Globally as of 2020, one-fourth of the countries were involved in the photonics industry chain, with a total of 4,842 enterprises. Among them, Chinese (1,804) and American (946) enterprises together accounted for more than half of the market share.

In 2021, the global annual revenue from photonics products exceeded $2.1 trillion, while the estimated valuation of photonics products and related services reached approximately $7 trillion to $10 trillion per year, accounting for 11% of the global economic output. As "consumer electronics" transition to "consumer photonics," the photonics industry has become one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide.