The Current State of Optoelectronics Industry in Japan

Abstract

The optoelectronics industry is expected to be one of the leading industries in the 21st century. Exten-sive growth in the optoelectronics industry has been sustained by recent advances in laser and optical fiber technologies, such as fiber-optic communications, optical disks, laser printers, laser processing systems and others.
The 1986 total production value was \1040 billion, an increase of 22% over 1985. Of this total, that con-cerned with optical devices such as laser and optical fiber totaled \370 billion, equipment and facility related production, such as laser processing, fiber communication and optical memory accounted for \543 billion and optical application systems, such as fiber communications, figured \127 billion. At present there is a growth in companies offering optoelectronic application devices and systems. The current state of optoelectronics indus-try in Japan will be surveyed for three technological areas: communication, information handling and energy application.