I understand what you mean, it's one of the very fundamental laws of physics and optics. You cannot increase the brightness od a source. This means, if you have a 1mm square emitting at 10mRad and you want it to be 1mRad, you have to make it 10 times the area for basic thought. While there are a very few exceptions to this rule. The most understandable being that you can technically "increase" the brightness using a lasing medium such as Nd: YAG, you cannot do so with a diode. (there is a way, but I will not discuss that.)
The reason for the fiber is the same as using an anamorphic prism, it compresses and circularizes the beam beking the output round instead of square/rectangular. An example of this can be seen
here where the 19 emitter bar is coupled into 19 individual fibers then the fibers are put next to each other to make the output more round.