I think that one of the hardest jobs that POET management have today is maintaining the balance between shareholder expectation and the realities of bringing a new technology to the market.  

There have been efforts made to explain how new technologies are brought to market. The qualifications required which can vary depending on whether the optical engine is for a customer specific product or for the general market.

I think this forum has received a pretty good education (based on management’s expectations) on market penetration and how that should be expected to evolve in terms of TAM, SAM and SOM as it would apply to POET. With the underlying understanding that the POET platform represents a replacement technology. As a replacement technology the benefits have to be proven to customers and the customer has to figure out exactly how they are going to use it and how it will be introduce it into their product line.

Below is a quote from an article I read on the emergence of solid state RF energy systems which are expected to replace the magnetron based microwaves we have been using for many years.

When two competing technologies approach cost parity, the better performing technology will always win out in the market. This is an accepted truism throughout the embedded electronics and semiconductor technology ecosystems, albeit affected by myriad factors that dictate the timing of the inflection point.

When we talk of the POET platform however we are in a very different situation where the cost of POET should overwhelmingly accelerate commercial penetration as both a replacement technology as well as enabling new applications that are just beginning to emerge.

Key statements from Tom Mika’s interview:

Our technology drives down the cost of manufacturing transceivers, reducing the cost of packaging and testing the optical components of the transceiver by over 50%, effectively doubling the margins on those products for transceiver suppliers. Because of intense price competition within the industry, many of the major data communications component and system suppliers are keen to incorporate our Optical Interposer solutions in their future products.

We are now at an inflection point in POET's history. In addition to doubling our revenue run-rate, the recent orders validate our approach with some of the largest and most influential companies in the data communications industry.

This proprietary approach dramatically reduces the cost of key components in optical transceivers, and we are the first company to find a way to solve this very challenging and costly problem for the photonics industry. That's why we have invested so much into the POET Optical Interposer. It is a fundamental departure from what all other component suppliers are doing. By applying the techniques of advanced semiconductor manufacturing to the photonics industry, we have been able to completely revolutionize the way the optical components and transceivers are built.