re: Smiles Abound at OFC/NFOECI see Pharmeceutical researchers completely uninformed about fiber optics. BUT it annoys me there appears to be open questions from folks at OFC regarding what other opportunities..perhaps medical.. can keep their fabs running. (Am I reading this right? Could they really not know this market?)
Medical/Analytical Instruments: And you think the mix in telecom is high? Applications and technology across Vision systems, sensors, spectroscopy, NIR, UV, in-situ/in-process - it's the same paradime everyone faced flocking to the government and military for business only to find everything is fragmented and specialized. There are a ton of med-equp. shops on the web using specialty sources and detectors now. COTS inititives became customized OTS(don't tell MRV). If your just getting started, you'll feel the old "shoul'd have started 2 years ago" (bought IP, acquired, etc...) for next year's orders.
Although something tells me the chip fabs already know this and just looking for excuses to stupidly flog their marketing and sales teams publically and keep the beer tabs down in Anaheim.
re: Smiles Abound at OFC/NFOECer: "Although something tells me the chip fabs already know this and just looking for excuses to stupidly flog their marketing and sales teams publically and keep the beer tabs down in Anaheim."
Don't underestimate the ability of companies to become so inwardly focused that they're clueless about alternative markets for their technology.
MRV, as you mentioned, is just waking up to several areas -- including the federal market (only the largest IT spender in the free world).
re: Smiles Abound at OFC/NFOECBUT it annoys me there appears to be open questions from folks at OFC regarding what other opportunities..perhaps medical.. can keep their fabs running. (Am I reading this right? Could they really not know this market?)
Following Phil's point -- it's highly possible they don't know the market thoroughly. I didn't mean to paint them all as clueless though -- the point is that they're looking for ways to fill their fabs, because the extra production would come at little cost. They're all hammering on that -- if you have a fab, you gotta keep it full.
I'm still wondering if the optics market can move more completely toward the fabless model. The seeds are there; Fabrinet seems to be doing a nice chunk of business.
re: Smiles Abound at OFC/NFOECjust sounds like too many fabs.
Fabless opto is a way off. Avo Photonics described the problem of having to keep vertical mfring. processes in-house aptly somewhere on optics.org (grant it, - they are tackling medical w/more focus at the moment).
Photonic Transistors (ref. U of I Urbana) seam to be forging the most direct path - even combining devices to replace current e/o-o/e components. It all just seams so far off and involve the complex processes still complained about from the lost bubble cap investments of 2000/2001.
Fabrinet is vertical integrated technologies like current/recently-formered crop of fab+"Mfrs"(JDS, FNSR, AVGO, SUMI etc.) - who traditionally just trying to keep their fabs running too from the beginning (if you got a hold of opeartions folks). These more reknown opto component "Mfrs" are filling out the low end product line with stuff from ShenZen, Tiawan... whatever). Some keep things in house (through near-virtual management of CHinese counterparts... yikes), but it doesn't make sense for fabs.+Mfrs to sell other guys chips in their components and stinks of deep changes still coming to the OFC crowed.
The functionally integrated Photonic devices are not coming from the Asian innovation deserts no matter how many American trained PhD's they pick up along the way.
And how much cheaper can fiber deployment be? OSP and CO, as well as SAN IT networks, physical installation commmonized on technologies and brought the market down near copper price points. The bottom of the food chain is tapping out (success?).
btw- government is spending less this year, C4ISR development grinding to a hault - Many military communications guys will enter the civilian job market this year.
Medical/Analytical Instruments: And you think the mix in telecom is high? Applications and technology across Vision systems, sensors, spectroscopy, NIR, UV, in-situ/in-process - it's the same paradime everyone faced flocking to the government and military for business only to find everything is fragmented and specialized. There are a ton of med-equp. shops on the web using specialty sources and detectors now. COTS inititives became customized OTS(don't tell MRV).
If your just getting started, you'll feel the old "shoul'd have started 2 years ago" (bought IP, acquired, etc...) for next year's orders.
Although something tells me the chip fabs already know this and just looking for excuses to stupidly flog their marketing and sales teams publically and keep the beer tabs down in Anaheim.