Some of the steps:

1.  Company spends its own money to design, build and deliver component prototypes (after long internal qualification cycles).

2.  Customer Engineering Team buys limited numbers of component prototypes to validate data provided by Company; pulls it apart to try to reverse engineer; and eventually the Engineering Team of Customer decides exactly how to use it;

3.  Now Engineering Team of Customer has to negotiate with Production Team of Customer to negotiate and decide if and when they want to change some or a lot of their existing production system to design-in all or some part of Company’s component prototype

 4.  Assuming 1- 3 above all goes well, Customer then places limited production orders and begins to include Company’s component in their product, after a rigorous analysis of Company’s production capability, financial condition, quality program, etc., etc.

Some highlights from HC Wainwright:

First orders received—the ultimate sign of progress toward full commercialization—and Mr. Market seems to snooze through it. One week ago, Monday, November 12, POET issued ground breaking press indicating the company had received $3M in prototype orders and development funding, the first P/L-recognizable revenue to result from the company's integrated photo-electronics effort

Importantly, last week's announcement regarding the $3M in orders represents work with more than one customer, and particularly interesting in deciphering the press that did not stipulate POET's previously-announced development partner, China-based Accelink, implies that this announcement clearly designates new partner customers. As we understand it, Accelink still represents a significant opportunity in providing 100G and 400G integrated photo-electric receivers to the burgeoning China datacom market in ultimately serving Huawei, arguably the largest telecom equipment supplier in the world

Complete validation of technology and approach. Per last week's press, the multiple orders from datacom and telecom "industry leaders" serve to validate POET's Interposer technology and the significant savings afforded through the integration process. As we interpret it, major global companies, not exclusively in China, are paying for POET's Interposer prototypes and their development to specifications—a giant step forward, in our view, for a mosquito of a company on the tail of the elephant-sized datacom-telecom industry.