Princeton Lightwave partners with Trumpf
Trumpf, based in Ditzingen, Germany, has acquired PLI s major assets, including its production facilities and its portfolio of relevant patents, along with a substantial number of highly qualified PLI staff. Trumpf has formed a wholly-owned subsidiary, Trumpf Photonics, with an initial headcount of 20 employees. Financial details of the deal were not revealed.
However, contrary to an inaccurate report on another news website, PLI will continue to exist as a supplier to the fiber-optic market. As PLI s General Manager and CTO John Connolly explains, the deal with Trumpf allows PLI to operate as a "fabless or fab-lite" organization.
"PLI will continue to make and sell lasers for the fiber market and Trumpf Photonics will manufacture optoelectronics components for PLI," explains Connolly. "Under the terms of the partnership, PLI will retain its extensive optoelectronics device design capabilities, characterization, reliability testing, fiber-optic packaging and application support facilities."
As Connolly points out, the fab-lite model is consistent with the growing maturity of the optical systems business, and reflects changes currently being made by other organizations such as Agere Systems and Nortel Networks as they adapt to the sales decline in the optoelectronics component industry.
"Operating without a fab permits PLI to diversify and invest in R&D of new technologies," says Connolly. "It will enable us to more effectively work with our telecommunications partners and other customers during the market recovery."
Connolly adds that such a business strategy also enables significant cost savings since PLI benefits from a reduction of its capital infrastructure. "Most of the component companies that emerge successfully from the telecommunications downturn will do so using this business model," he says.
PLI was spun-out of Sarnoff Corporation in the spring of 2000 with venture capital backing. In 2001, the company launched several products, namely high-power pump lasers, broadband gain chips and advanced source lasers, and also reported a power level of 1 Watt from single narrow-stripe 1480 and 14xx nm pump laser chips.
A spokesperson for Trumpf said that the company was currently evaluating which markets it would seek to address with its new laser diode manufacturing capability. The telecoms market is unlikely to be considered at present. The Trumpf Group is a privately held company with FY 2000/2001 sales of €1.22 billion ($1.2 billion) and four divisions – laser technology, machine tools, electronics/medical technology and power tools. Peter Leibinger, chairman and CEO of Trumpf Inc. (Farmington, CT) will serve as president of Trumpf Photonics.
