Those contemplating the immediate future of the thin film solar cell material market now have an interesting new resource to draw from, with the release of a comprehensive new report on the subject from ReportsnReports.
The report — titled Thin Film Material Market By Type (CdTe, CIGS, a-Si, Others), End-User Industry [Photovoltaic Solar Cells, MEMS, Semiconductors and Electrical (Circuit Boards), Optical Coating, Others], and Deposition Processes – Global Trends & Forecast to 2018 — as it’s name implies, forecasts global trends in the market till the year 2018.
Image Credit: Boshu Zhang, Wong Choon Lim Glenn & Mingzhen Liu
Given the great variety of different materials/approaches/geographical-focuses in the field, the future features a number of highly varied potential outcomes.
As the report notes, companies are often times limited to and based around specific technologies based on their geographical presence — companies can’t use cadmium-based technologies in the EU; US-based First Solar owns a market share of about 90% in CdTe technology; Europe has a tiny share of the thin film solar market. These sharp, pronounced divisions make for a highly interesting market, but also make predictions fairly difficult — something that intensive market research, like that provided by this report, can help with.
The press release provides an overview of the report:
The thin film material market has no specific set of raw material or ingredients. Every thin film is unique and the manufacturers use their own set of raw material and ingredients to manufacture these material. The industry also lacks the need for bulk suppliers. The raw materials that are used in bulk are rare material and chemicals such as cadmium, indium, telluride, and certain common metals such as copper. These materials are not difficult to source, unless there is some crisis or regulatory problems that prohibit their usage beyond a certain value.
This report analyzes various marketing trends and establishes the most effective growth strategy in the market. It identifies market dynamics such as the drivers, restraints, opportunities, burning issues, and winning imperatives. Major companies such as Anwell Solar (Hong Kong), Ascent Solar (US), Avancis GmbH & Co (Germany), Cicor Group (Switzerland), First Solar (US), Hanergy (China), Kaneka (Japan), Masdar PV (Germany), Moser Baer (India), Solar Frontier (Japan), Suntech Power Co (China), and Trony Solar Holdings Co (China) have also been profiled in this report.
Those interested can purchase the report here.
In related news — recent predictions are that the silicon thin-film market is likely nearing complete collapse. With the relatively recent announcement that DuPont was looking to completely terminate its silicon thin-film operations, there simply doesn’t seem to be much driving force in that industry market anymore.
According to EnergyTrend, the future of silicon thin-film is simply “steady decline.”
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