"ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!": The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite
- Nanotechnology - The Science Behind Better Supplements: A
technological revolution that will irreversibly alter the way people
live and work.
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http://21241.royalbodycare.com/Nanotechnology_Revolution.aspx
The total market impact of nanotechnology will reach $1 trillion by 2005. - The National Science Foundation
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http://21241.royalbodycare.com/Nanotechnology_Revolution.aspx
- NSF (National Science Foundation): Nanotechnology Initiative National Nanotechnology Initiative Overview - Research Directions II - September 8, 2004
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http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/reports/nni_overview_rdii.pdf
- "Estimation on revenues from nanotechnology: Reaching $1trillion in
2015 worldwide, and the estimations moving closer because of accelerated
development; growth >25% per year. "
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http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/reports/nni_overview_rdii.pdf
- Taiwan Nanotechnology Output to Soar - Researcher
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http://forbes.z2c.net/rd4/ck/3072-13370-1839-293?m=11-0&e=2f517c002918
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Backed by strong government funding, Taiwan's output of a wide range of products using nanotechnology will jump 10 fold by 2008 to T$300 billion ($10 billion), a top researcher said on Tuesday.
Nanotechnology deals with manipulating particles one-billionth of a meter in size, and promises benefits from a coating of paint that lasts decades, to faster-acting and more effective medicines, to golf balls that go further and straighter.
"The government has targeted nanotechnology as the most important strategic industry for Taiwan's future economic growth," Su Tsung-tsan, the general director of the NanoTechnology Research Center (NTRC), told Reuters.
Su said Taiwan will produce T$1 trillion of goods using nanotechnology by the year 2012, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the island's US$350 billion economy.
The NTRC, which gets about half of its budget from the Taiwan government, is home to about 150 researchers who cooperate with private companies and academic institutions to find commercial applications for their research.
According to data from research company Venture Analytics, Taiwan nanotechnology research funding ranked number eight in the world in 2003 at US$115 million.
The island is ahead of France and India, but far behind regional competitors like China and South Korea.
"Nanotech is crucial for Taiwan's goal of becoming a knowledge-based economy," said Su.
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http://forbes.z2c.net/rd4/ck/3072-13370-1839-293?m=11-0&e=2f517c002918
- Nanotechnology products to bring $2 trillion by 2014:
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http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6917_0_6_0_C
Estimates of nanotechnology's financial impact range from about $20 bln to $50 bln in revenues today, jumping to as much as $1 trillion by 2010 and more than $2 trillion by 2015. Lux Research forecasts products incorporating nanotechnology by 2014 will account for $2.6 trillion worth of products 15% of global manufacturing output.
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http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6917_0_6_0_C
- Revenue from Nanotechnology-Enabled Products to Equal IT and Telecom by 2014, Exceed Biotech by 10 Times:
$2.6 trillion in products will incorporate emerging nanotechnology in 10 years :
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http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20041025/NYM11625102004-1.html
NEW YORK, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Sales of products incorporating emerging nanotechnology will rise from less than 0.1% of global manufacturing output today to 15% in 2014, totaling $2.6 trillion. This value will approach the size of the information technology and telecom industries combined and will be 10 times larger than biotechnology revenues, according to a new report from Lux Research entitled "Sizing Nanotechnology's Value Chain." However, sales of basic nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and quantum dots will total only $13 billion in 2014: Nanotechnology's economic impact will arise from how these fundamental building blocks are used, not from sales of the materials themselves.
The report refutes the popular misconception that nanotechnology is an industry or a sector -- it isn't. Instead, nanotechnology is a set of tools and processes for manipulating matter that can be applied to virtually any manufactured good. Rather than envisioning a mythical "nanotechnology market," Lux Research recommends that executives focus on how nanotechnology is being exploited across industry value chains, from basic materials to intermediate products to final goods. The report presents separate forecasts by each value chain stage as well as by sector and region.
"Over the past several years, companies have selectively applied nanoscale innovations to products ranging from the Chevrolet Impala to Merck's anti-emetic drug Emend," explained Matthew Nordan, Vice President of Research at Lux Research. "These initial deployments have proven the value of nanotechnology, setting the stage for an explosion of applications. In 2014, we project that 4% of general manufactured goods, 50% of electronics and IT products, and 16% of goods in healthcare and life sciences by revenue will incorporate emerging nanotechnology."
Lux Research predicts that nanotechnology's growth will occur in three phases:
- In the first phase, ending this year, nanotechnology is being
incorporated selectively into high-end products. In 2004 revenues from
products incorporating emerging nanotechnology will total $13 billion,
$8.5 billion of which lies in automotive and aerospace applications.
- Through 2009, commercial breakthroughs will unlock markets for
nanotechnology innovations, with revenues rising to $292 billion.
Electronics and IT applications will dominate as microprocessors and
memory chips built using new nanoscale processes come to market.
- From 2010 onwards, nanotechnology will become commonplace in manufactured goods, with revenues rising to $2.6 trillion in 2014. Healthcare and life sciences applications will finally become significant in this period as nano-enabled pharmaceuticals and medical devices emerge from lengthy human trials.
The widespread use of nanotechnology in mainstream products will have profound ripple effects. Ten million manufacturing jobs worldwide in 2014 -- 11% of total manufacturing jobs -- will involve building products that incorporate emerging nanotechnology. Nanotechnology will shift market shares and introduce unconventional competitors: For example, silicon nanowire display printing technologies could cut capital requirements for flat-screen display plants by an order of magnitude, tempting fleet-footed manufacturers like Dell to enter the market. Supply chains will simplify as highly functional materials eliminate steps in manufacturing processes, negatively impacting sub-assembly manufacturers and transportation companies while making value-added taxes more productive for governments than sales taxes.
"Nanotechnology's increasing relevance creates clear mandates for business and government leaders," said Nordan. "Corporations need to develop an explicit nanotechnology strategy -- apart from leaders such as DuPont and Praxair, few companies coordinate their nanotechnology activities at all today. Investors should focus on nanotechnology applications in the middle of industry supply chains where profit potential is highest, and consider laying nanotech as a long-term secular trend. Public sector leaders should focus on fostering nanotechnology demand, not just supply, and establish informed regulation to address health and safety issues."
For "Sizing Nanotechnology's Value Chain," Lux Research built bottom-up, top-down, and evolutionary models of 42 product segments impacted by nanotechnology. The report team populated the models through exhaustive secondary research; interviews with more than 100 executives, researchers, and academics working to commercialize nanotechnology; and integration of macroeconomic data from organizations such as the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the World Bank. Additionally, Lux Research partnered with UK-based Volterra Consulting -- founded by Paul Ormerod, influential economist and author of "Butterfly Economics" -- to build advanced evolutionary models that measure how nano-enabled solutions compete for market share with alternatives.
The report is available immediately to clients of Lux Research's Nanotechnology Strategies advisory service. For information on how to become a client, contact Rob Burns, VP of Sales at (646) 723-0708.
About Lux Research:
Lux Research is the world's premier research and advisory firm focusing on the business and economic impact of nanotechnology and related emerging technologies. Lux Research provides continuous advisory services, customized consulting, and reference studies to corporations, start-ups, financial institutions, and public sector organizations. Our founders and our research staff are the most widely recognized nanotechnology visionaries throughout the world. Visit http://www.luxresearchinc.com/ for more information.
- In the first phase, ending this year, nanotechnology is being
incorporated selectively into high-end products. In 2004 revenues from
products incorporating emerging nanotechnology will total $13 billion,
$8.5 billion of which lies in automotive and aerospace applications.
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http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20041025/NYM11625102004-1.html
- The Nanotechnology "Industry"
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http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/
- A few years back the National Science Foundation and its
National Nanotechnology Initiative
proclaimed that the “Nanotechnology Industry will be a
$1 trillion
industry by 2015.”
Since that time, this figure has been quoted by nearly everyone to justify just about every commercial endeavor in the area of nanotechnology.
We here at Cientifica have always maintained that no such “industry” exists and that there isn’t much use in trying to define one. At first, we were a lone voice in the woods, but more and more people are coming around to this realization.
Well, now the US Government has addressed the issue in the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently released report, “The National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years: Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel.”
Here’s the part that captured our interest:
“Any credible attempt to define a nanotechnology “industry,” therefore, will have to establish a threshold contribution level and explain why that level was chosen. This report does not attempt to choose or defend such a threshold.”So, finally we have some responsible thinking here. Perhaps the entire value of a Mercedes Benz automobile should not go to calculate the value of nanotechnology just because its coatings may have some nanoparticles in it?!
If the PCAST now thinks it prudent to step away from defining a “nanotechnology industry”, do we still have to labor under that $1 trillion nanotechnology industry number? Can’t the NNI or the NSF say: “By the way, we had no real way of coming up with that number, so don’t quote us on that anymore.”
Not likely, we know, but it would be nice.
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http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/
- Debunking the trillion dollar nanotechnology market size hype - Posted: April 18, 2007
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http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1792.php
- (Nanowerk Spotlight) There seems to be an arms race going on among nanotechnology investment and consulting firms as to who can come up with the highest figure for the size of the "nanotechnology market". The current record stands at $2.95 trillion by 2015. The granddaddy of the trillion-dollar forecasts of course is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) "$1 trillion by 2015", which inevitably gets quoted in many articles, business plans and funding applications. The "nanotechnology market" as a unified market was first quantified by the NSF in its massive 280-pages report from March 2001 (Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, pdf download 3.1 MB). The problem with these forecasts is that they are based on a highly inflationary data collection and compilation methodology. The result is that the headline figures - $1 trillion!, $2 trillion!, $3 trillion! - are more reminiscent of supermarket tabloids than serious market research. Some would call it pure hype. This type of market size forecast leads to misguided expectations because few people read the entire report and in the end only the misleading trillion-dollar headline figure gets quoted out of context, even by people who should now better, and finally achieves a life by itself.
Today, there isn't even a clear definition of what nanotechnology is. The CRN blog covered this confusing picture quite nicely in a recent post. But taking every product that has anything to do with nanotechnology, however miniscule or remote, adding up the entire value chain of these products, and claiming this is "the market for nanotechnology", isn't very helpful either. On the contrary, it contributes to the confusion: first we are told how revolutionary nanotechnology is going to be (think molecular nanosystems such as nanorobots). Then we hear that actually there is quite a discussion going on among experts as to when or whether it's going to happen. And now we read that nanotechnology will be an almost three trillion dollar market within the next 8 years!
First of all, these market size forecasts are dealing with what is called evolutionary nanotechnology. The goal of evolutionary nanotechnology is to improve existing processes, materials and applications by scaling down into the nano realm and ultimately fully exploit the unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale. This trend is driven by companies' ongoing quest to improve existing products by creating smaller components and better performance materials, all at a lower cost. Just look at what happened in the computer industry over the past 20 years; and by definition of the nanotechnology research analysts, because chip design structures have broken the 100 nanometer range, the semiconductor industry is on its way to becoming a nanotechnology industry. Due to this ever continuing trend of "smaller, better, cheaper," the number of companies that are, by the same definition, "nanotechnology companies" will grow very fast and soon make up the majority of all companies across many industries – and they will have familiar names such as Kraft, L'Oreal, Toshiba, GE, BMW, Nokia or Bayer.
By contrast, truly revolutionary nanotechnology envisages a bottom-up approach where functional devices and entire fabrication systems are built atom by atom. There is no way today to put a market value on this visionary technology and its hypothetical products and it is therefore not covered in any of the nanotechnology market size reports.
Secondly, these market size reports don't measure the value of actual nanotechnology products, materials or processes. They compile the value of nanotechnology-enabled products (a fact that the reports do point out). This fine distinction is worth trillions of dollars. Here is a typical nanotechnology market size forecast:
Original graphic removed
Lux Research has threatened legal action against Nanowerk if we didn't remove the graphic that we previously showed here. They claim it violates their copyright, although the material we used didn't contain any copyright or usage restrictions and the material is freely available for download. A presentation document that contains this graphic can be downloaded here (pdf, 820 KB – look at page 6). A link to this presentation document can be found here at Rice University's International Council of Nanotechnology. The graphic basically is a simple graph that plots the Lux Research forecast of sales of products incorporating nanotechnology from 2005 to 2014. It starts at around $300 million in 2005 to become $2.9 trillion by 2014.
Breaking down the market size figure into nanomaterials, nanointermediates, and nano-enabled products shows that actual nanomaterials contribute less than 0.5% (this share is so small that it doesn't even show up in the above chart - which of course now you can no longer see because Lux Research forced us to removed it). Lux Research estimates the market for pure nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes, nanoparticles, quantum dots, dendrimers etc.) to grow to approx. $3.6 billion by 2010 (from $413 million in 2005). In comparison, the Lux forecast for the entire "nanotechnology impact" by 2010 is roughly $1,500 billion.
The latest Cientifica white paper ("Half Way to the Trillion Dollar Market") starts out quite reasonably by stating:
In 2000 the National Science Foundation estimated that the market for nanotechnology products will be over one trillion US dollars by 2015 and that the industry would employ over 200 million workers. These numbers have been subsequently quoted from funding applications to government policy documents, but at the halfway point many of the revolutionary and disruptive technologies predicted have failed to emerge. Indeed, seven years on from the inception of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, there appears to be little sign of a nanotechnology based industry, although significant amounts of R&D are being undertaken by various industries.
Then the report goes on to estimate the "Global Nanotechnology Market" by 2015 as $1.5 trillion excluding semiconductors and $2.95 trillion including semiconductors.
Somewhere in the text of the Cientifica report is this key sentence: "It should be noted that this is not the total value of nanotechnologies included in products, but the total value of the products. Thus a tenth of a gram of nanomaterials costing 10 cents may be included in a drug costing $100 per dose."
Just to be clear here: this means that the nanotechnology market size, as compiled by Cientifica and others, includes the $100 for the entire drug dose, not it's actual 10 cents nanomaterial ingredient. In this example they are therefore expanding their definition of "market" by a factor of 1,000 simply by including the entire product's value, not just the nanotechnology component in it. This methodology is then consequently applied to all industry sectors.
If you were to research the U.S. market size for, say, color pigments, i.e. various organic and inorganic particles such as carbon black or iron oxide, you would come up with a figure of about $2 billion to $3 billion per year. This is the actual value of pigments sold. Color pigments are used for a myriad of products such as paints and coatings, printing inks, plastics, ceramics, glass and minerals, textiles and leather, toner, cosmetics and toiletries, paper and paperboard. Now, if all these pigments were nanoparticles, the nanotechnology analysts would tell us that the market size of "color pigment-enabled products" was many hundreds of billions of dollars; because now they would include the end products that the pigments were used in. Nobody today claims that the market size for color pigments is hundreds of billions of dollars or talks about a color pigment-enabled market. But when the pigment size moves from the macro- to the nanoscale, some analysts would do exactly that – although apart from the pigment size nothing has changed. It is difficult to see the logic in this.
There is an argument to be made that nanotechnology should not be looked at as a product industry but rather as a set of enabling technologies that supports many existing industries (basically applying the "nano" label to existing technologies – electronics, optics, composite materials, pharmaceuticals etc.). However, the nanotechnology analysts apply their magic trillionizer trick to this area as well. Let's say that a laboratory device for blood testing contains a microfluidic component and that component gets reduced in size to a nanofluidic device. All of a sudden, the market value for nanofluidic devices would not just be the value of the actual component but include the entire value chain of blood testing – because it is now "nanotechnology-enabled".
Lux Research in a recent report ("Sizing Nanotechnology’s Value Chain") makes a similar stretching exercise as Cientifica by predicting a $2.9 trillion nanotechnology market by 2014. They correctly identify this number as "Sales of products incorporating nanotechnology". According to their example, the value of all Chevy Impalas – just because the car contains a component that contains nanoparticles – would be considered part of the nanotechnology market. That's got to be an even higher scale-up factor than the 1,000 for the drug in the Cientifica example.
Nanotechnology Value Chain
Original graphic removed
Lux Research has threatened legal action against Nanowerk if we didn't remove the graphic that we previously showed here. They claim it violates their copyright, although the material we used didn't contain any copyright or usage restrictions and the material is freely available for download. A presentation document that contains this graphic can be downloaded here (pdf, 820 KB – look at pages 5 and 7). A link to this presentation document can be found here at Rice University's International Council of Nanotechnology. Our graphic was a composite of the value chain that Lux Research uses and two examples for that value chain, one a "nano-enabled" Chevrolet Impala and the other "nano-enabled" mobile phones from Nokia and Samsung. It's worth going through the whole document, you can also find nice pictures of a (presumably "nano-enabled") Hummer H2 and an entire oil drilling platform.
So what is the point of coming up with the market size for "nanotechnology-enabled" products? It's difficult to see the practical value apart from creating headlines that help sell these reports. If you want to convey the message that nanotechnology will revolutionalize many processes and products, there must be a better way doing that than generating eye-popping, headline-grabbing, trillion-dollar market size figures.
Of course it helps tremendously in writing business plans and funding applications. It might be very useful in politically justifying the billions of dollars that have already gone into infrastructure and basic R&D. Unfortunately, it can also be abused for marketing slogans by the kind of investment advisors who push nanotechnology investments as a get-rich-quickly promise: "Wow, look - this company makes a new nano product/application/material/whatever. It is a player in a trillion dollar market. If they only get 0.1% market share that would be 1 billion dollars!"
But seriously, what is the practical value of knowing the market size for nanotechnology-enabled products if soon almost everything will be nanotechnology-enabled (at least by the definitions used in the market sizing reports)? The recent Cientifica paper states: ... an enabling technology that supports other industries will not ever be considered a stand-alone industry.... Quite rightly so. So why then try constructing an artificial market for of a wide range of enabling nanotechnologies by adding up the value of all products that somehow benefit from these technologies?
Farming, for instance, has been one of the truly revolutionary enabling technologies invented by mankind. However, nobody compiles a "farming technology" market report. And if they did, they most likely wouldn't include derivative areas like restaurant furniture, bread slicing machinery or beer glass manufacturing, all of which wouldn't exist without farming. Well, maybe the nanotechnology research analysts would...
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that these trillion-dollar forecasts for an artificially constructed "market" are an irritating, sensationalist and unfortunate way of saying that sooner or later nanotechnologies will have a deeply transformative impact on more or less all aspects of our lives.
By Michael Berger, Copyright 2007 Nanowerk LLC
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http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1792.php
- Overhyped Technology Starts to Reach Potential: Nanotech to Impact $3.1 Trillion in Manufactured Goods in 2015
