Market Overview

The domestic quantum computer market size based on the sales at service providers is likely to attain 13,940 million yen during FY2021. The experimental demonstrations proactively utilizing quantum computers have been underway at advanced companies in some industries including chemical, finance (for asset management and risk management), ecommerce (for recommendation systems), logistics, and in academic use, mainly on the themes difficult to calculate with conventional supercomputers such as combinatorial optimization (CO) problems and speeding up of search processes. These demonstrations have generated applications that specialize in material computation and simulations, and developed various solvers that include those for optimization and quantum machine learning. Therefore, various application explorations, some still underway, have actually born fruits.

Noteworthy Topics

Rapid Market Expansion May Be Achieved by Progress in Hardware, Generation of Applications, and Exploration of Use Cases

The domestic quantum computer market size is expected to expand rapidly, on the premise of the following three conditions: 1) Progress in hardware and improvement in development environment, 2) Generation of applications to induce hardware capability, and 3) Exploration of use cases.

First, for the issue of progress in hardware and improvement in development environment, multiple ways of research and development have been in progress, driven by the Cabinet Office’s “Moonshot Research and Development Program” as well as by the fierce competition among hardware developers in and out of the country. To improve the development environment, hardware vendors have contributed in providing SDK (software development kit) and process automation software that can be used when utilizing development platforms or quantum computers. Also, there have been some attempts to build a community among developers, mainly hardware vendors, to help enhance the development environment.

Next, regarding the issue of generating applications, experimental demonstrations chiefly on material computation and quantum machine learning successfully brought about various applications. Of the applications for solving optimization issues, those that solve familiar challenges such as optimizations of scheduling and seats have been generated, some of which have actually been adopted. In addition, there are some businesses striving for generation of new applications through building and expanding a community for developers.

Lastly, as for the issue of exploring use cases, to contribute to popularization of quantum computers, user companies are required to be more voluntary in exploring their business workflow challenges with the help of IT vendors than in developing quantum computers or software. In addition to the attempts of providing training programs for user companies by each vendor, the successive launches of “QII (Quantum Innovation Initiative Council, the bureau at Tokyo University)” at the end of July 2020, and of Q-STAR (Quantum STrategic industry Alliance for Revolution) in September 2021 are likely to accelerate the generation of use cases across multiple industries such as finance, chemical, automobile, etc., which should be looked at.

Future Outlook

The domestic quantum computer market size based on the sales at service providers is projected to attain 55,000 million yen by FY2025 and 294,000 million yen by FY2030.

By around FY2024 and FY2025, some business workflows in the advanced industries including chemical, finance, and advertisement (recommendation systems) are likely to shift to production phase, while some experimental demonstrations for certain workflows in a certain sector are projected to be implemented in different sectors, which overall increases the number of experimental demonstrations. Some tasks done by supercomputers such as searching of new functional materials and chemical compound are considered to shift to be done by quantum computers. In addition, as NISQ is expected to be fully available by FY2024, experimental demonstrations using NISQ for quantum chemical calculations and quantum machine learning are regarded to increase, expanding the market size to 55,000 million yen.

After FY2026, quantum computers may fully be utilized for simulations, such as dynamic pricing for finance, numerical fluid dynamics and/or aerodynamic characteristics for manufacturing, and promising forecast of chemical compound structures for the chemical sector. It can also contribute to recommendation engines and optimization of search results and suggestions for ecommerce. For the energy sector, it is expected to help seek the resources development and enhance energy saving by finding out optimal energy mix for a VPP (virtual power plant).

By FY2030, quantum computing is forecasted to be fully implemented for automotive battery development and for medical care that can lead to innovative treatment such as preventive medicine and preemptive medicine, gradually bringing about enormous impact to the society. The market size in FY2030, therefore, is expected to reach 294,000 million yen.

* NISQ is the abbreviation of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computer. It is a gate-based quantum computer positioned at the phase prior to a universal quantum computer.

Research Outline