a fair question. since I don't have any information that you don't have, I can only guess.

option #1: they are in fact having problems with it, and continue to work on it until satisfied.

option #2: what if as a stand alone VCSEL it is merely equal to the competition (and therefore not newsworthy), but as a component of the integrated opto-electronic solution, we are still in business? (crush the competition) Someone who understands the tech better than I might laugh at this, but its conceptually possible (to me).

option #3: because they are getting squeezed on the timeline, they aren't going to bother announcing it separately. We've seen this before with milestones. We (forum members) are waiting and waiting, and then the milestone kind of disappears, and we are like, WTF?, and they are like, oh, yeah, that wasn't that important to tell the market, now that we are doing THIS!

I'm not saying this is good, or even OK, but I feel we don't really know nearly enough to say, unequivocally, we've got a real problem here.

I do think that NRE's are dependent on the AOC being in hand, which means that it might be Q2 before one might be announced. this is kind of why I think the CC will be informative, but again, probably disappointing to those looking for THE explosion. but I am optimistic that when they are ready, the Shelton thing will guarantee the institutional audience is set up to get the message loud and clear.

hope that helps