SnackRat: A company like APPLE would have to know about POET. It would be (is) in their best interest to do so, …

Yes, but would it also be in POET Technologies' best interest? Considering that POET Technologies wants to remain an independent company, I'd rather quote Geoff Taylor: "I hope we have enough pride not to do that."

Having Apple as a customer would be great of course, but in the present state the danger of getting into an oppressing dependency, with Apple dictating the rules would IMHO be too large. With an established customer base things would look better – at some later stage.

Can you imagine POET does deliberately not talk with Apple, let alone Intel?