Nanotechnology may one day become the basis for the next—and perhaps final—industrial revolution. But nanotech is still in its infancy despite some wild projections that the "science of the small" will explode into a trillion-dollar market over the next decade or so. (You get to that trillion-dollar estimate only by describing something as a "nanoproduct" if nanotech is any part at all of the manufacturing process.)
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Another, more conservative estimate comes in a new report from the Business Communications Co., a technology market research firm. BCC estimates that the total global demand for nanoscale materials, tools, and devices was around $7.6 billion in 2003 and is expected to reach about $29 billion in 2008. But even that number is less impressive than it first looks. Nearly 98 percent of global nanotech sales come from the nanomaterials sector which mostly includes "several long-established markets such as carbon black rubber filler, catalytic converter materials and silver nanoparticles used in photographic films and papers." That’s all pretty low-tech stuff. By 2008, though, the nanomaterials share of the market is projected to shrink to 75 percent of total sales. Nanotools will have increased their share to 4 percent ($1.2 billion), and nanodevices to a 21 percent share ($6.0 billion).
Also on the nanotech front, a recent Merrill Lynch report on an analyst meeting with Dr. Tom Theis, director of physical sciences at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, notes that although Theis believes perception about nanotech has gotten ahead of reality, he also thinks nanotech could eclipse information tech in importance in 20 to 30 years.
