People can read a news release and derive different means from it.

I believe the focus of this news release was to tell shareholders and industry that the first commercial products are ready and that some really advanced applications based on the optical interposer will be completed over the coming months. The work to produce these advanced applications will provide specific customer needs and that work is being paid for by the customers.

to develop and provide increasingly integrated optical engine components or to systematically address specific customer integration requirements

Why should we believe that they can achieve these targeted applications? Because of what they have done in such a short period of time so far with the optical interposer.

Poet's chief executive officer, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, commented: "We introduced the Optical Interposer in January of this year and have now received multiple orders from datacom and telecom industry leaders. This validates that we have a compelling photonics integration platform. The Optical Interposer enables manufacturers of conventional and silicon photonics transceiver modules to reduce costs and, in some cases, to cost-effectively transition from 100G to 400G products using a common platform architecture. We expect these current orders to lead to the inclusion of more of our Optical Interposer technology in current and future products, including 400G transceivers for datacom and low-cost devices targeted at the high-growth market for 5G cellular and next-generation access networks."

And lastly consider the dollar value. Some people will look at the amount and consider it “a start”. And I  think everyone recognises that it represents a significant point where POET now can say definitively that they now  have a differentiated platform that industry can rely on for growth (to cost-effectively transition from 100G to  400G).

Not to read too much into this news release but the language used to me implies that there is more to come:

First orders

The orders include sales and development contracts…

I think they are talking about more than prototype sales or prototype development.

It will be very interesting to see whether guidance will be provided based on these initial  orders as I  would expect that discussions around what level of volume production will be made available to  these customers to cost effectively meet their expansion/growth needs.

It is a big deal and a first for POET.