Ice41, can you be specific and provide what technology platforms you are comparing POET to. The reference companies should be compared to POET in terms of cost, performance and the ability to ramp high throughput by automated processes. POET’s CAPEX to establish production is 10% of existing processes and that I believe is at least part of the reason why they were essentially able to get a free ride in terms of establishing production with one of the largest compound semiconductor companies in the world. SAIC specializes in volume production as demonstrated by becoming the leading provider of the wolds LED’s.   

I have spent a long time looking and have also had the opportunity to talk to both Suresh and Vivek and there does not appear to be any platform technologies that compares to POET. Seriously when POET says they have achieved industry leading results and processes and industry firsts it does not leave much room for others in this field. All through history we have seen technologies that can do somethings well but when it comes to the application in an actual platform that has all the advantages of POET they fall short and reach a dead end. What is  very apparent and makes perfect sense is that companies who are in the business of  building optical devices such as lasers are going to end up dealing with POET (if their devices make the cut)

Often when we review companies that are working on the optical integration problem the conclusion after some digging is that they are often at differing stages of R&D. POET is no longer in R&D on the platform but are in design on a growing number of applications with customers.

So please provide some specific examples if you can on the technologies that you think can compete. The fact that companies are trying to compete just demonstrates that there is a need to improve the status quo.