Eugene Scherbakov
Chief Executive Officer at IPG Photonics
Thank you, Valentin, and good morning, everyone. During the quarter we demonstrated excellent progress in our core material processing market, across all major geographies, with accelerated growth in high power and ultra-high power lasers for cutting applications in the U.S. and Europe and strong growth in welding in China and Europe.
We also delivered robust growth in emerging products and applications. Revenue from material processing applications increased 27% year-over-year and contributed 93% of total revenue in the quarter. Sales in welding application grew significantly in the last several quarters due to increased sales of our AMB adjusted motor beam lasers for general manufacturing purposes and electric vehicle battery welding applications.
Battery manufacturers are facing challenges welding together different type of materials such kind of copper, sulfur and aluminum. These materials are extremely same reflective and need to be welded with high precision and reliability. Each battery model requires hundreds of welds and our AMB lasers can address these challenges, offering superior speed and weld quality or competence solution this broad range of beam tunability and spotless welding. We also saw strong demand in emerging and micro material processing applications such as solar cell manufacturing and 3D printing.
Sales of our green pulsed lasers, which are used to improve solar efficiency more than tripled compared to the prior year and becoming a more meaningful part of IPG's revenue. We are taking advantage of opportunity created by increased focus on sustainability globally and expect future solar cell manufacturing capacity to grow driving additional sales in our green lasers. We are also increasing the pulse energy of the green lasers to enable next-generation applications in solar, drilling and copper welding for consumer electronics. Revenue from our other applications increased by 5% year-over-year. Medical sales showed a good growth both year-over-year and sequentially, as a result of improved demand of our surgical lasers. Advanced application sales improved year-over-year, while telecom revenue declined compared to the same period in the prior year.
Examining our performance by region. Our revenue in China increased 10% year-over-year in the second quarter representing approximately 43% of our total sales. Year-over-year comparison for the region was more difficult as China sales rebounding from the pandemic earlier than other regions last year. We saw strong demand in welding application for our AMB and ultra-high power lasers while demand and cutting translate at the end of the quarter, so the sales of high-power lasers increased only slightly compared to the second quarter last year. We continue to see solid demand in foil cutting and welding applications, related to electric vehicle batteries and also starting to see some demand for the LightWELD compared by the welding system in China, which should provide a modest benefit to revenue in the second half.
While China's market remains very price competitive, we have continued to be disciplined with our approach to pricing given superior performance quality, energy efficiency and reliability of power lasers. China remains a significant part of the customer base that is very focused on the price alone. Sales to the rest of Asia increased 123% year-over-year with strong growth in Korea and other countries, offsetting lower revenue in Japan. We are seeing a strong demand for our welding and foil cutting solution for EV batteries in Korea and encourage by improved bookings in Japan. In Europe, revenue increased 50% year-over-year as we saw an acceleration of demand from customers in the region and strong growth in cutting, welding, marking and cleaning applications.
Sales improved significantly in high power -- ultra-high power in AMB and QCW lasers. European cutting customers are moving into the ultra high-power lasers and are replacing CO2 laser with fiber lasers to improve productivity. Bookings for the region remain positive pointing to continued recovery. Revenue in North America increased 23% year-over-year. Growth was primarily driven by material processing and increased sales of high-power lasers for cutting applications.
Sales to automotive was traditional. Electrical and solar markets remain strong. We also saw solid improvement in micro material processing applications and strong growth in demand for LightWELD. Besides our normal direct sales model, we are leveraging the new third-party resales with numerous welding stores and new direct online sales platform for LightWELD in US.Laser system sales improved in the second quarter. This is both laser and non-laser system posting strong revenue growth. Booking remained high and we expect to see additional improvement in system sales in the third quarter. We continue to benefit from our vertically integrated production model which enable key technology advantages or the competition while minimizing the cost and supply chain disruptions.
However, we did experience focus on certain components during the quarter and so increasing lead-time that have impacted our and our customers' operations. We are also evaluating inflationary pressures on our input cost and we will deviate prior quotations when they expire.Despite this troubled years, we were able to deliver the revenue growth to the midpoint of our guidance and gross margin close to top or our expectations for the second quarter.IPG itself been a technology leader in fiber laser more than 20 years. And none of our competitors have been able to match or approach the capability of our products. Restructuring development is our DNA. And we are continuing to focus on reducing the cost and improving the quality of our components and products.
We are also committed to expanding the range of products and applications. We address by pushing on research and development project. By belief we can commercialize in the near to midterm which have significant market potential.We will continue to focus on opportunities where we can increase our value propositions to customers by delivering complete processing and technology solutions with our optical -- and system capability. I want to thank our employers through the execution during in the second quarter and thank our shareholders for your continued support.
With that I will turn the call over to Tim to discuss financial highlights in the quarter and third quarter outlook.