At the markups they are making they could be hand-soldering the bits and still be ahead, scaling existing process makes more sense than investing more in research.
> scaling existing process makes more sense than investing more in research.
It doesn't sound like they've stopped investing in research in general. Just one specific area.
"We've been working on this for decades and can't figure out how to commercialize it, so we're going to try different things" is a healthy result, even if other companies got different results.
At the markups they are making they could be hand-soldering the bits and still be ahead, scaling existing process makes more sense than investing more in research.
> scaling existing process makes more sense than investing more in research.
It doesn't sound like they've stopped investing in research in general. Just one specific area.
"We've been working on this for decades and can't figure out how to commercialize it, so we're going to try different things" is a healthy result, even if other companies got different results.