As you say customer testing issues will almost certainly occur...

As you say customer testing issues will almost certainly occur and are usually resolved but still take time to resolve. I guess the issue is whether the attraction of a third supplier (outside the duopoly) with the prospects of better future performance and more flexible form factor outweigh the inevitable problems of a new supplier. Price will also come into the equation. AS they have said new (and frustrated) applications are likely to be early customers what I'm concerned about is that they focus support on potential "volume"customers rather than waste time/effort on low volume/high risk customers who may well have a "worthy" or "long term" application but are unlikely to impact the near future bottom line.

What will really give BLG an edge will be better (or more efficient) performance than the competition and addressing frequencies the competition cannot be bothered with. In that context I'm keep to see the dual n wave (i.e tunnel junction) devices and DFB lasers hit the market - those will give BLG a real edge over the competition. Right now our devices have only just matched the competition although we do appear to be more flexible and provide frequencies the competition are not interested in (probably because there is not a big market in these application), however that market may well be big enough to get BLG started.