Nice find Abel!
What does worriv me a little is the max. distance of 100mm, so it seems to be for macro picures. For high quality photography (SLR...) the power has to be improved.

But in deed these are low hanging fruits:

Such a "distancer" does not have to be part of a highly integrated 40nm SoC, so here the PbP can be implemented very fast.

A VSCEL (emittler + detector) + fast logic on one tiny chip is already a magnificiant product:
I guess no existing technology can be faster and offer lower production cost and lower form factor then POET!