I'd like to reiterate Dr. Forrest's welcome to all of you, to what is the first of our series of market seminars for 1989. In 1988, we held three of these seminars, the counterpart to this one on the general laser market, one on the medical laser marketplace, and most recently in September, at IMTS on the industrial laser market. The first two have been published as proceedings by SPIE, and the proceedings of the industrial laser marketplace, which Dave Belforte worked on putting together, are in the process of being published by the SPIE.

My topic is emerging laser technologies. Most of what I will say is derived from the material that we gathered in preparation for the January magazine issue, and it is derived from interviews with industry executives including many of you people in the audience. And you can look in the January issue of Laser Focus World for detailed discussions of all the different laser technologies.

The laser industry's dynamic movement that characterized the industry of 1988 was acquisitions and mergers. The laser industry is undergoing its own version of perestroika or restructuring. Shakeouts and consolidations which have marked the industry for the past two years continued to reshape the laser industry landscape in 1988.

We've invited three people to speak on the Laser Diode Market-place. I'm going to ask them to come up and sit up here so you can watch their reaction to each other's presentation, as well. Jamie Dreyfuss from Mitsubishi was invited as a person who is representative of what I would call the commercial/consumer laser diode marketplace. The second speaker will be Dave Evans. Dave Evans is from Spectra Diode Labs, the pioneering company in terms of increasing the output power of the laser diode. The third speaker will be Tom Wolfram who's the General Manager of Amoco Laser, both a consumer of the high powered laser diodes, and also, within the Amoco organization has a substantial investment and interest (in the person of Bob Burnham who's also here) in laser diode technology.

I'm going to talk about the worldwide market for scientific lasers. I felt we should start with a quote from our soon-to-be President and learn from him how he feels about the commitment that the government should make to R&D. "R&D is the economic Fountain of Youth, and we really should take good care of it because that is where our business is for the future." If you read through that quote, it is very clear that at least before the election, he made a very strong commitment to this. It will be interesting to see over the next four years whether he keeps to that commitment or not, but I happen to totally agree with what he is saying here. The R&D market, as I see it, is certainly, as far as lasers are concerned, the growth place for new technology and applications.

About two or three weeks ago, when we were preparing information for this meeting, Moe Levitt asked me to sum up in one sentence what I thought was the most significant part of my presentation. I think the most significant thing is that, "In 1989, for the first time the total sum of goods and services in the industrial laser marketplace is going to exceed $1 billion." This is a very significant number, and I hope to point out to you where that number comes from, and why we find it significant.

What I want to do now is go through the entire market, as it exists now, the medical market, segment by segment, and estimate market size for each segment, as well as indicate what the predominant trends are in each segment. So, Fig. 1 will serve as an overview for the entire talk. This should put the whole thing in perspective.

Milton Chang: The topic, of course, for my part of it is to talk about the fund raising issues. Obviously, how much you need, and from whom (See Fig. 1), I'll try to cover that. But in terms of real issues, you really want to get money from people that you enjoy working with. Often times, when you are trying to raise money, you are willing to take money from anybody, and that's just the beginning of mistakes. Life is too short.