Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War

Posted by Unknown on from the learning-from-mistakes dept.

kenekaplan writes "In an interview with The Atlantic before stepping down as CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini reflects on his decision not to make a chip for the then yet released iPhone. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'"

88 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Gripping insight by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 4, Funny

    I usually don't keep up on things like this, so it was nice to see an article that really s

    --

    Long signatures suck.
    1. Re:Gripping insight by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Never mind the Twitterizing of the title, how about: "for the then yet released iPhone".

  2. yet released? by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    chip for the then yet released iPhone

    I have heard the term then yet unreleased but what does then yet released mean? Is this something like flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:yet released? by rsborg · · Score: 2

      chip for the then yet released iPhone

      I have heard the term then yet unreleased but what does then yet released mean? Is this something like flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing?

      Probably "yet to be released iPhone", but truncated because what's a couple of words here and there?

      --
      Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
    2. Re:yet released? by Yebyen · · Score: 1

      I think it's somewhere between after when you decided to use even go want to do look more like, and the part that make you more the even wanted to because I couldn't even has been.

      --
      Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
    3. Re:yet released? by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      "then yet "

      read at that point in time it was .

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
  3. Author has his head by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Way to far up Otellini ass. Was there some bad PR that prompted to him to write this turd encrusted, brown nosing article....

  4. The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, we've all heard guys tell stories like this. It takes me about 20 seconds before I mentally paint an "L" on their forehead.

    The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

    Intel knew this was on the way and didn't think it was lightning in a bottle? Their shareholders should be furious.

    1. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by mmcxii · · Score: 2

      Yeah, we've all heard guys tell stories like this. It takes me about 20 seconds before I mentally paint an "L" on their forehead.

      Ok. So you've never let something get away from you that turned out to be huge? I'm sadly one of those guys with a big "L" on his forehead. I have a good friend who did a website early on in the history of the web and he made an absolute killing for a guy just turning his hobby into a business. Part of his success really wasn't the site itself but also who he partnered with and that added value to what he already created. He left this venture after about 15 years and while I think he'll go on to other things I'd like to think he's well enough off that he won't have to. I could have been part of that but at the time I thought it was something that may have made beer money but I didn't expect much. At the time it was also a hobby site more than anything else. Oh well, such is life.

      It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

      What was first?

    2. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

      I disagree, but that's probably because I'd been using PDAs for a decade prior to the iPhone. Everyone in the PDA business knew that phones and PDAs were going to merge. The only thing they didn't know was if phones were going to pick up PDA features, or if PDAs were going to be able to make calls. In the end, they are both small computers running various programs.

      The only game-changer the iPhone brought was that it eschewed hardware number/keyboard entry (and one helluva marketing campaign). Others had toyed with a purely touchscreen interface before, but nobody had bet the entire farm on it like Apple did. (For those taken in by the marketing who believe that the iPhone was the first purely touchscreen phone, google for LG Prada.)

      In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod. It was ho-hum in terms of technical features - things which everyone else already had or had tried before. But the interface was a game-changer, and even if they weren't actually the first to market with the idea their massive marketing campaign made it first in people's minds. So I don't really blame Intel for missing the boat. Interface and marketing aren't things you can really appraise prior to a product's release. If Intel judged the iPhone purely on its technical features, it would've looked like any other smartphone with one helluva risky bet on a touchscreen-only keyboard. Just like the technocrati here first saw the iPod and based on its technical features declared, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

    3. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You could look at Apple's own Newton and see a lineage. PDAs existed before the iPhone and are pretty much a dead market now.

      Apple had quite a few of innovations, some created in-house and other purchased. The iPhone has a fantastic interface. Even the earliest iPhone had a quick, responsive interface with excellent graphics. They were first to bring multitouch gestures to a mainstream appliance. As you pointed out they got rid of hardware keys without using garbage like "grafitti". They put a lot of work into a better interface and it shows.

      Apple designed their way out of the intimitation factor. They simplified everything down to one button. When grandma gets lost on an iPhone or iPad she knows that one button will always get her unstuck.

      I'm not an Apple fanboi, the Galaxy sII and Asus Transformer next to me are proof of that. Android has taken Apple's starting point and improved on things IMHO.

    4. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

      In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod.

      The original iPhone was an iPod Touch enhanced with the 3G network and a camera. My wife was looking at getting one but we didn't want the data network. My cousin (an Apple employee at the time) suggested the iPod Touch instead, and then use WiFi+Skype for calls. Now she's looking at an iPad to get the camera (for video calls); but she's been otherwise very happy with her iPod Touch.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    5. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >>"So you've never let something get away from you that turned out to be huge?"

      Of course. Most people don't run around bragging about it. Warren Buffett used to talk about passing on the chance to own Microsoft (back when he told this story Gates still ran the store).

      Steve Jobs bet Apple's future on the iPhone and won. It took stones. He said when he introduced the device it would change they way we make phone calls and it has. You, me, and ~80% of the US market using cell phones at this moment have a smart phone that has been influenced by the design of the iPhone.

    6. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Reverberant · · Score: 1

      The original iPhone was an iPod Touch enhanced with the 3G network and a camera. My wife was looking at getting one but we didn't want the data network. My cousin (an Apple employee at the time) suggested the iPod Touch instead, and then use WiFi+Skype for calls..

      I think it would be more accurate to say "the original iPod Touch was and iPhone without the phone" given the iPhone came to market first (June 2007 vs September 2007).

    7. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting but Apple developed iPhone over ~2 - 2.5 years. Depending on when the key players sat with Intel that likely would have been enough time to develop a first generation chip. Apple sold 3 million iPhones it's first year, so the payoff would have been worth it.

      Apple met with other vendors who stretched out of their comfort zone - such as Corning to create the first generation Gorilla Glass. Corning had all the reason in the world to play it safe. They had just lost big on photonic technology and were hovering over the junk stock threshold. Corning's closest experience to the iPhone's display was CRT tube glass. Gorilla Glass is now used on 1.5 billion devices around the world.

    8. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 1

      I do. You should see my bathroom.

    9. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 1

      Your memory is flawed. iPhone was first. iTouch was created shortly after out of popular demand for an iPod with a iPhone's touch interface.

    10. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 1

      >>"If CEO of Intel isn't enough to put someone above the "loser" bar, then what are you?"

      Your real father.

    11. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Jobs just designed the pain out of the iPhone. Long battery life. Just works. No hassle operation. Huge apps. A natural extension to your growing stable of i-stuff.

      The herd moved. The CPU? An ARM-- the direct and absolute antithesis of everything Intel stands for. Simple, low-power consumption, RISC, and with easily grafted subsystems.

      If Intel did the ARM, it would measure six feet by eleven feet, weigh 900lbs, and use four kilowatts of electricity, and would need to have Microsoft's lipstick on it.

      It's maximally disingenuous of Otellini to utter such horse crap. Andy Grove, come out of retirement, would ya?

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    12. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by mea_culpa · · Score: 1

      This is likely the main reason Otellini "stepped down" a few years early. Intel CEOs typically stay at the helm for 10 years.

    13. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Picass0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "maximally disingenuous"

      Good phrase.

      Consider how much has changed since the iPhone 1 ~ six years ago.

      Apple has nearly done away with the click wheel. In fact most music devices are now touch screen based.
      Clamshell and candybar phones are increasingly a rarity, most people have a smart phone or feature phone.
      The iPad grew out of the iPhone and now has dozens of imitators.
      The "ebook" grew out of the tablet market pioneered by Apple.
      The laptop market has been overtaken by the tablet market.
      Tablet and Smart Phones have cut heavily into the handheld game market.
      MS decided to glue a touch tablet interface onto it's desktop OS Windows 8. OK, I threw that one in there for laughs.

    14. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The "ebook" grew out of the tablet market pioneered by Apple.

      1) The Kindle was launched three years before the first iPad.
      2) Apple neither invented nor "pioneered" the tablet, either.

    15. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

      I disagree, but that's probably because I'd been using PDAs for a decade prior to the iPhone. Everyone in the PDA business knew that phones and PDAs were going to merge. The only thing they didn't know was if phones were going to pick up PDA features, or if PDAs were going to be able to make calls. In the end, they are both small computers running various programs. The only game-changer the iPhone brought was that it eschewed hardware number/keyboard entry (and one helluva marketing campaign). Others had toyed with a purely touchscreen interface before, but nobody had bet the entire farm on it like Apple did. (For those taken in by the marketing who believe that the iPhone was the first purely touchscreen phone, google for LG Prada.) In that way, the iPhone was a lot like the iPod. It was ho-hum in terms of technical features - things which everyone else already had or had tried before. But the interface was a game-changer, and even if they weren't actually the first to market with the idea their massive marketing campaign made it first in people's minds. So I don't really blame Intel for missing the boat. Interface and marketing aren't things you can really appraise prior to a product's release. If Intel judged the iPhone purely on its technical features, it would've looked like any other smartphone with one helluva risky bet on a touchscreen-only keyboard. Just like the technocrati here first saw the iPod and based on its technical features declared, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

      How many PDAs or smart phones in 2007 could leverage the tremendously popular iTunes store? How many had web browsers that could actually display most sites as intended (flash notwithstanding)? To me there were other things that the iPhone brought to the table that could have been used to evaluate its potential.

    16. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      Considering iTunes' not working on other devices was due to DRM (mainly), I can't say it's a very positive aspect that only the iPhone could do it.

      My smartphones back then did a very good job with what web pages were available back then, no problems there.

      The iPhone only really changed two things:

      Interfaces got flatter (fewer sub-menus) and touch input replaced physical keyboards and navigation keys.

    17. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      I never claimed it was any such thing.

      Statistically, however, it's been a huge financial success and propelled Apple's ecosystem to unusual heights, whether you or I like it or not.

      Battery life compared to others was pretty good for the data features it provided. Apps had to grow and become part of iTunes financial system. And apps have made some developers very rich and others not so, but their financial ecosystem, awful as it might be, made a lot of millionaires from dev teams. Android has been successful in the same way. RIM/BB and Microsoft, not so much- save Microsoft's extortion for Android cease-and-desist money.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    18. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      If Intel did the ARM, it would measure six feet by eleven feet, weigh 900lbs, and use four kilowatts of electricity, and would need to have Microsoft's lipstick on it.

      Nonsense. Intel used to have an ARM division (bought from DEC). They called it StrongARM, later renamed to XScale. They were basically popular for devices in the same general category as iPhone and iPod Touch. Intel sold off that business to Marvell in 2006 because they thought they could get the power consumption of x86 down enough by 2010 that it would kill demand for ARM.

      They were wrong. They couldn't do it and still produce a chip that was usable. Atom's in-order execution model sucked for performance, giving ARM a sizable advantage. And in parts that don't have that limitation (e.g. Haswell), the power consumption even three years after that deadline is still at least an order of magnitude too high. (An iPhone, assuming no changes to the battery, would get fewer than 8 hours of life with a Haswell CPU even if the CPU did nothing but sit in its lowest idle power state for the entire time.)

      But worse than that, Intel bet the farm on the concept of standalone CPUs that hardware makers could tie into a custom northbridge, if desired. The problem is, that isn't what the manufacturers wanted. And for the most part, they didn't want standardized SOCs, either. They wanted raw cores that they could integrate into their own SOCs.

      For example, most of the guts of an iPhone 5 are in a single chip that, according to Wikipedia, provides two ARM codes, three GPU cores, and RAM all in a single package. That's the level of integration that you want when you're trying to build a tiny device. Every additional component on a board represents an additional set of interconnects waiting to fail.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    19. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      Considering iTunes' not working on other devices was due to DRM (mainly), I can't say it's a very positive aspect that only the iPhone could do it.

      My smartphones back then did a very good job with what web pages were available back then, no problems there.

      The iPhone only really changed two things:

      Interfaces got flatter (fewer sub-menus) and touch input replaced physical keyboards and navigation keys.

      You're applying your techie values and missing some things. You may see iTunes and associated DRM as a disadvantage but the larger group of consumers doesn't (or didn't). It was a hugely positive aspect and only the iPhone had it. Further, the app store wasn't there at day one but it really helped push the iPhone ahead of everybody else when it did come. This in spite of the fact that lots of techies don't like the walled garden aspect of it. The world is filled with people who don't really care about that.

      The touch input just didn't replace the keyboard and navigation keys. It allowed for much better navigation than what was available before, especially on a small device. Pinch and Zoom was what really made web pages designed for large screens workable on a small one, so no the web browser you had was not nearly as good in comparison even though it may have been decent for its time and good enough for you.

    20. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 2

      Kind respondent,

      You say "Nonsense" when you've just said pretty much everything that I said as an argument to my post. Thanks for the corroboration.

      The Atom is a catastrophe in the phone and tablet market. Yes, StrongARM might have had a chance, but DEC didn't invent the 6502 and was only a licensee of ARM-- and DEC had other IP that HP bought and Intel shared over another catastrophe chip, the Itanium. There are a closet full of these things. Intel wanted to control all of the elements, just as Apple has, with their supply chain. They said, essentially: go away. And they did it, and like it or not, it worked. It has its problems. Nothing is problem-free.

      But in terms of leadership and direction, Otellini has run Intel into a ditch. Software acquisitions have helped a bit, but in terms of silicon leadership, Intel has lost a lot of ground-- despite the missteps of AMD. The ARM licensees have shown great vision and lots of brains. NVidia eats a lot of lunch and for good reason-- they're not stuck in a ditch of their own making.

      Integration is a wonderful thing. We're not talking servers that will last ten years. Consumer devices last about three, then they churn. If they're made by HTC, IMHO, they last about two years if you're lucky. I'm not a believer in disposable electronics, rather, Intel's vision of how to make devices can be readily stated as old-school. The day of fat motherboard chipset licenses is freaking over. The half-life of a phone or tablet design is a meager nine months. Intel just isn't ready to live in those cycles. That's why deft manufacturers have designed around them and the supply chains evolved to move around them.

      Intel is leaden.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    21. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

      That's only because Steve Jobs used his time machine in 2010 to go back and push Corning to make it...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    22. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesecake23 · · Score: 1

      The day Steve Jobs stood in front of a room and introduced the Iphone EVERYONE knew this was a game changer. "Today we're going to introduce a new iPod, a phone, and world class web device" As he repeated that line the graphics on the screen merged and the room realized the leaks about three new products were instead one new device. It was a hell of a mis-direction. It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

      The day Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone EVERYONE already knew that he was going to announce it. There was no misdirection involved.

      But granted, three new devices all-in-one-package was a clever spin.

    23. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      You say "Nonsense" when you've just said pretty much everything that I said as an argument to my post. Thanks for the corroboration.

      Not at all. You said that if Intel built an ARM chip, it would be a huge beast that draws lots of power. They did build an ARM chip, and it wasn't huge, slow, or high-wattage. It was used in lots of handheld devices for many years, in fact.

      Intel builds x86 chips that way because the x86 and x86-64 ISAs are entirely too complex, so they have to build ever-more-complex hardware to hide the performance that would otherwise result from that fundamental limitation. And they are getting better about that, but it has taken a long time to get them to come around to a more mobile way of thinking.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    24. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      There's some whoosh going on here, as my tongue was firmly in my cheek.

      Yes, somehow Intel convinced HP to use ATOM instead of ARM in Project Moonshot. I notice that HP can't get Moonshot out the door.

      It is NOT IN INTEL'S DNA to think about supply chains that aren't invented at INTEL. They are in a ditch of their own making. It's going to take a bunch of ugly quarters to get them really moving again, and much longer to regain thought leadership. By then, we'll have 64core widgets that only a mother could love, that still can't do threads right, and shoot towards power consumption that's plainly evil. And the ghost of John McAfee will continue to haunt them.

      So let's talk about those ARM chips that Intel made. I can find them in one of the five top selling phylum of smartphones, right? Tablets? You mean neither of those? Not even the Surface RT? Egads!

      Intel is nothing if leaden. They did well for years, and then, after repeated gaffes and partnerships, they barely made it out of the woods duking it out with AMD. They need a ruthless Grove in there to cut and cut until they get the core mission back. Yell, scream, and strive to out-do everyone. They have no boldness. They have inbreeding and golf.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    25. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Xest · · Score: 1

      "Jobs just designed the pain out of the iPhone. Long battery life."

      What? I'm not disagreeing with everything else you said, but the iPhone brought in an era of phones that needed charging every night, when before they, including smartphones, lasted a week.

      I never saw this as a problem as I always habitually put my phone on charge every night anyway, but I don't see how the iPhone brought in long battery life, it did the complete opposite, it took battery life from a norm of 5 - 10 days down to 1 - 2 days.

    26. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by narcc · · Score: 1

      Revisionist history

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    27. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by narcc · · Score: 1

      Ridiculous.

      RIM's BlackBerry killed the PDA market. They were long dead before the iPhone was even a rumor.

      As for the merging of PDA and cell phone, A Handspring Visor + VisorPhone Springboard module from 2001 is, well, a lot like an iPhone. To see the failure of a product like the Newton (a poor dynabook imitation) as pioneering is to ignore a lot of history.

      The iPhone has a fantastic interface.

      Not from a UI design perspective. From the ridiculously clunky suite of gestures to the overloaded home button, the iPhone UI is a giant pile of failure. It succeeds at doing very few simple, but common, tasks well: selecting an application and quitting the same. It's a gigantic mess from that point on.

      Even the earliest iPhone had a quick, responsive interface with excellent graphics.

      I'll grant you "responsive" but the display was average at best -- and quickly became one of the worst on the market due to some really stupid UI decisions on Apple's part.

      They were first to bring multitouch gestures to a mainstream appliance.

      I love the "mainstream" qualifier here -- with a subjective term like that, you'll never be wrong. Ignoring the long history of multitouch and the incredibly poor use of multitouch gestures in iOS (poor then, worse now), are you sure that's a place you want to praise Apple?

      As you pointed out they got rid of hardware keys without using garbage like "grafitti". They put a lot of work into a better interface and it shows.

      Apples on-screen keyboard is exactly what you found on low-end PDAs 10 years ago. I should note that Apple's keyboard was, and continues to be, one of the worst on the market. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone defend it against the (clearly superior) alternatives past and present.

      I'm not an Apple fanboi,

      Sure about that? You're giving Bonch, BasilBrush, and SuperKendall a run for the biggest Apple fanboi title here.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    28. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      Other phones had long battery life. And they didn't have the processing power. Face it: transistors cost money. Flip phones were marvelous in that they used energy scrupulously.

      It took a while to cut that down, and now appsdevs and the core OS makers are very sensitive to optimizing the chipsets.

      But yeah, for its functionality levels, the iPhone blew the doors off equivalent-functionality phones.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    29. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't disagree that the decreased battery life occured for good reason - you were getting a larger colour screen and so forth, but even if the argument was that battery relative to efficiency of what the device does (rather than simple battery duration) is the argument I'm not terribly convinced the iPhone was in any way ahead here, things like the N95 had much better battery life still and were more powerful devices.

      Apple had a lot of problems with batteries for quite some time, all the way upto and including the 3GS they couldn't get the technology quite so well pinned down as their competitors (though there wasn't much in it compared to other similarly priced smartphones with similar capacity batteries), so despite all the changes the iPhone brought to the market I can't see any convincing argument that improvements in battery life or efficiency was one of those things.

      It would've always been difficult for Apple to be a leader in the battery usage in smartphones in part because things like Series 60 had been so better optimised for power over so many more years. Don't get me wrong, Series 60 was shit, but it did allow equally powerful devices to be more efficient than iOS (or Android) at the time. The same was always fairly true for Blackberry, they had battery efficiency nailed down far more tightly than any of the new entrants at the time (Google and Apple) did on their devices.

      Again this isn't to belittle Apple, the gains in what the device could do and the way it worked more than made up for any battery deficiencies (especially as most people were happy to do what I do and charge every night regardless) but I don't think they can really be credited with any battery improvements by any metric!

    30. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      The topic is Intel, so I'll frame it within the reference of a large shift in computing that Otellini missed-- an area of consumer products dominated by smartphones and tablets. Servers have done well, too, but the packaged 1U-5U/generic blade markets haven't done quite so well.

      You focus on the iPhone. There's not one high-selling Intel-powered phone or tablet on Earth. Not ONE.

      I cited Apple to show how Otellini and Intel in general, though that their domination of the PC industry would make them kings forever. It did not. They deluded themselves.

      My first views of the iPhone were that it wasn't all that great, but by comparison to phones in the market at the time, it had any number of good things going for it. The Treo and a few Nokia and LG and HTC and other phones were trying. Not one of those had an Intel chip inside.

      Otellini was asleep at the switch and the train wrecked.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    31. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 1

      Uhm, you do realise that Intel had one of the better ARM processors out there back in the PDA days, right? Do some reading on Intel Xscale CPUs. They were in several Palm/WinCE devices, and then Intel sold off the division.

    32. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      Uhm, do you realise that Intel sold one of the businesses they owned that had unbelieveable potential? Uhm, do you realize that they, uhm, don't have squat for low power processors and comprehensive consumer platforms? Uhm? Or that they could have uhm, been maybe a leader in uhm, ARM? Uhm?

      I uhm, had a Palm and an uhm, HP, and uhm others based on uhm, a processor family that they, uhm, screwed off.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    33. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      The funny thing is he gets modded up by the Apple sycophants as informative when his speech is composed of blatant lies and non-sequiturs.

      The modern smart phones are not that different from candy bar phones. The main difference is the size of the screen. In fact they are considered derivatives of the bar format. There were plenty of PDAs with smartphone capability before the iPhone. These include the Mio A701 and a myriad of HTC devices running Windows Mobile. The first smartphone with a touch screen was probably the IBM Simon (1994). The iPad was designed before the iPhone (if you believe Apple themselves) and people have been working and selling tablets for a long time before the iPad was released. These include the Microsoft tablets which never took off because they were not lightweight enough due to the existing hardware back then. Not to mention the Nokia 770 devices. The ebook market started a long time before Apple got involved in it. For example the Kindle was released years prior and Sony also had dedicated ebook readers back then.

      The losses in the portable game sector were mostly predictable and several vendors even bet on it early on (remember the N-Gage?) and the laptop losses were going to happen once the tablet devices matured. The first iPad was clearly not good enough but as software matured and it became possible to connect to a projector, to print from the device, and the applications got more diverse the use cases started to get there.

    34. Re: The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      StrongARM was also used in the Compaq iPAQ devices which were reasonably successful PDA devices at the time. There was even an optional cell phone add-on available for it.

    35. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Intel sold XScale because they thought they could get X86 power consumption down to compete. They did. There are Atom smartphones available now from Lenovo for example and these are still not as integrated as some of the ARM devices. Once Intel gets enough on-chip integration the chips will have similar power consumption characteristics. There is nothing magical about ARM.

    36. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Just one button

      And just one brain cell to know when to press it as well.

    37. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      My candy bar phone back then played MP3s just fine. I do not see what's the big deal with vendor-locked iTunes.

    38. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      If it's so easy and simple, why is Intel in a ditch?

      Put on some cleats when you astroturf.

      And no, there isn't anything "magical" about ARM. It's just clever, and not an ecosystem you can control, like Intel likes to control.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    39. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      My candy bar phone back then played MP3s just fine. I do not see what's the big deal with vendor-locked iTunes.

      Where did these mp3s you played on your candy bar phone come from and what steps did you have to go through to get them on the phone itself? Could you browse through a library of millions of songs (on the phone) and download them individually or by album? Could you do it legally? What about your non-techie friends and relatives? Even if their phones could play mp3s, did they have any clue as to how to do it?

      To be completely accurate, the ability to download songs from the iTunes store straight to the iPhone itself wasn't there at launch. It took a few months but that does point out another advantage of the iPhone over what was available at the time, - frequent software upgrades.

      More and more it's becoming apparent to me that many of us in the tech industry have a huge blind spot. We want faster GPUs and processors. We want more storage capacity, more bandwidth, and more pixels, but we really only care about ease of use to a point. We like gadgets and playing with software so if getting some music on our phone takes some fiddling with software and hardware, it's just part of the fun. On the other hand, if everyone can do it, it takes away from our techie mystique. ;-)

      Yes, iTunes was vendor locked but it was apparent well before 2007 that vast majority of the public didn't care.

    40. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.

    41. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.

      You have to remember that we're talking about 7 or 8 years ago when Intel opted not to work with Apple on a processor for the iPhone. Amazon wasn't selling MP3s at the time and wouldn't start until after the iPhone was released. And then only with a much smaller list of available titles compared to the iTunes store.

      As for ripping CDs, when's the last time you actually bought a music CD? I haven't in a long time. Why? Because downloading is so much easier and convenient. This is one of the things the iPhone offered that other phones of that era didn't.

    42. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      You can purchase MP3 legally from Amazon. CD ripping (aka format shifting) has always been legal.

      Oh and if your candybar phone was anything like mine, using its hobbled browser to download music from Amazon would have been pretty painful if would have worked at all.

  5. my gut by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    My gut tells me not to eat tacos with honey Diablo habenero sauce anymore. I don't listen either.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  6. I wish I'd went with my gut... by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it," Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought." It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. "The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut," he said. "My gut told me to say yes."

    So, he made a perfectly rational decision based upon the data he had available. It turned out in the long run that he would have been better off if he had acted otherwise, so looking back on it he says it would be better to reject rational decision making. I find this unconvincing. In my experience, people have a fantastic way of revising their own personal histories and 'the gut' is a great tool to do so. If I made the best choice I could, given the information I had, and it turned out incorrect I can always look back on things and say that my gut told me otherwise. By this means the chief protagonist of my personal history will always be correct, always know the right thing to do, even when it turned out to be wrong.

    1. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by Above · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The only thing worse than no data, is bad data.

      I'm going to assume that Intel is pretty good at projecting their cost to make a chip, and that while that estimate was wrong it was unlikely wrong by a factor of 100x, more like 10-30%. That's probably still counts as good data.

      Making a guess as to the volume of a brand new device, which to quote him "no one knew what the iPhone would do" is the essence of making a decision based on bad data. Any projection there was completely made up. A straw man for Apple to negotiate pricing. Treating that as some sort of number that could be plugged into a spreadsheet and used to make a decision is tantamount to incompetence at his level.

      The iPhone created a new market. With even a minimal amount of information (which they had to have to do a chip cost estimate, I believe) they could have realized that. Business school 101 talks about the first mover advantage, and how locking up a market early on is often one of the make or break elements. They should have had a serious discussion about how much money they were willing to risk losing with Apple just to be the ones that walked into this new market with Apple hand in hand. By having a head start on designing chips with the right qualities they stood a good chance of selling them to other companies who wanted to get into the competitor-to-iPhone market and needed similar capabilities.

      There is an aspect of hindsight being 20/20 here, but the big wins in business all come from a calculated risk. Apple's original projections for the iPod were blown away as they dominated the portable music player market. There was good reason to think the phone would be the same. Intel had a strong balance sheet at the time, and could have risked a loss if it flopped for the chance of being the go-to chip guy for an entire class of new cellular telephones.

      This was someone with an engineering background, who trusted questionable numbers over rational risk taking business decisions. That's extremely not good for someone in his position.

    2. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by unimacs · · Score: 1

      So, he made a perfectly rational decision based upon the data he had available. It turned out in the long run that he would have been better off if he had acted otherwise, so looking back on it he says it would be better to reject rational decision making. I find this unconvincing. In my experience, people have a fantastic way of revising their own personal histories and 'the gut' is a great tool to do so. If I made the best choice I could, given the information I had, and it turned out incorrect I can always look back on things and say that my gut told me otherwise. By this means the chief protagonist of my personal history will always be correct, always know the right thing to do, even when it turned out to be wrong.

      I agree that hindsight is 20/20. However, he may have actually had an inclination that he decided to ignore and instead make a decision "based on the data he had available"

      The problem is that we sometimes look at all the relevant reports, trend studies, and specs we've been presented with and figure that constitutes the data that's available. It's not. I believe that what we often call "gut instinct" or "intuition" is really our mind's way of combining various bits of information from throughout our lifetime and merging it with our sense of the current situation to form an opinion. THAT is data too.

      Many techie people seem to be confounded by Apple's success because the just look and the hardware specs and think there's better stuff available. Lot's of folks in the tech industry thought the iPad was going to be a huge flop.

      They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.

    3. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by gstrickler · · Score: 1

      I agree that hindsight is 20/20.

      Unfortunately, that's often not true. Some people are still blind in hindsight.

      However, he may have actually had an inclination that he decided to ignore and instead make a decision "based on the data he had available"

      The problem is that we sometimes look at all the relevant reports, trend studies, and specs we've been presented with and figure that constitutes the data that's available. It's not. I believe that what we often call "gut instinct" or "intuition" is really our mind's way of combining various bits of information from throughout our lifetime and merging it with our sense of the current situation to form an opinion. THAT is data too.

      Many techie people seem to be confounded by Apple's success because the just look and the hardware specs and think there's better stuff available. Lot's of folks in the tech industry thought the iPad was going to be a huge flop.

      They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.

      Well said. Those who look only at the available data will always miss the next trend, because the data isn't yet available. Sometimes, you have to take the risk and trust you intuition/gut.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    4. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by unimacs · · Score: 2

      They seem to have a hard time grasping that numbers aren't all that matter and more data needs to be considered. The game changers are often the people who know how to look beyond the numbers.

      This is especially true for Apple. Apple's sales have always relied as much on consumers' emotional responses to its products as to the tech specs - - (Apple haters would say they relied it more or exclusively). It's always been about creating "an experience" for consumers, which, by definition, creates an emotional appeal that can't be measured quantitatively. So anyone who tries to judge the likely success or failure of a new Apple product based solely on numbers and tech specs just doesn't understand the way Apple does business at all.

      I'd take it further than that. To like something because it's easier to use than another product isn't just an emotional response, it's a very practical one. The iTunes store made it easy to get the music you wanted. There were smartphones before the iPhone and even ones with touch screens. There were PDAs, There were mp3 players. There were cameras. Apple created a device that from a sheer hardware and software standpoint was perhaps not the best of breed in any of those categories but was by far and away the best at combining them. It was also easy to buy which is part of the process.

    5. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by zaft · · Score: 1

      This was someone with an engineering background, who trusted questionable numbers over rational risk taking business decisions. That's extremely not good for someone in his position.

      Otellini is not an engineer.

    6. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by Above · · Score: 1

      Otellini is not an engineer.

      While his degree is not in engineering, quoting his Wikipedia page:

      Otellini joined Intel in 1974. From 1998 to 2002, he was executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, responsible for the company's microprocessor and chipset businesses and strategies for desktop, mobile and enterprise computing.

      I'm pretty sure he knows more about microprocessor engineering than many fresh college graduates. His business bacgroung is all about making engineering driven decisions, which was my point.

    7. Re:I wish I'd went with my gut... by Pubstar · · Score: 1

      I think everyone here forgot about the flop that was Motorola's iTunes phones. There were two of those things released prior to the iPhone, IIRC.

  7. The real question is by MLBs · · Score: 2

    Would the iPhone still be a success with an Intel processor, given the power consumption of their chips at the time.

    1. Re:The real question is by alen · · Score: 2

      intel owned an ARM chip maker at the time and they still have an ARM architecture license

    2. Re:The real question is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I suspect (without RTFAing of course) that the CPU in question would not have been x86, but an ARM chip -- Intel used to make them under the StrongARM and later Xscale brands, but sold that line to Marvell; it's conceivable they could have returned.

      Intel is king of fab, they keep a half-step to a whole-step of process size ahead of the leading ARM SoC makers, so if they went with their process and ARM IP, they'd be insanely dominating, instead of just competing as now (because the x86's disadvantage almost exactly makes up for the process step's advantage). But they'd rather tie with their own IP than win with something licensed -- which I guess is just as well in the big picture, because the competition among SoC vendors makes for a healthier market, and Intel's domination if they'd gone that route would end many SoC lines.

    3. Re:The real question is by Amouth · · Score: 1

      Remember that intel had and still has an arm licence, and when they did make their own arm processors the xscale had one of the best power to performance ratios available, while also having very effective frequency scaling and power management..

      Even if it was an Apple designed SoC the quality of Intel's foundries are unmatched really, so for the same chip they would have received a higher quality product.

      It's my opinion that, yes it would have been better.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    4. Re:The real question is by MLBs · · Score: 1

      Ok, then my new real question is Did Intel refuse because they didn't think the iPhone would be good business for them,
      or because they insisted on making it an x86, due to IP pride and such,
      which conflicted with Apple's vision.

  8. What is the Mobile W? by hawguy · · Score: 1

    Is that some new Windows phone?

  9. Re:Millions... by mmcxii · · Score: 1

    Maybe part of the Hollywood sign. If not, then check in the Alamo... in the basement.

  10. how much money is samsung making? by alen · · Score: 1

    foundry is not a high margin business. apple seems to be making all the money on the iphone. how much money would intel have made selling $20 chips?

    you could argue they could have controlled the entire mobile chip market by now, but that is a stretch

    1. Re:how much money is samsung making? by unixisc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Intel's foundries are not the same as foundries from the likes of TSMC, Samsung, UMC, Chartered Semi & so on. They are an entire process ahead of the rest of the industry, and leading edge in terms of manufacturing variations. With other companies, there are variations between their fabs, which is why qualifications from one fab doesn't necessarily translate to the others. With Intel, they make all their processes absolutely identical, and strive at it. Also, Intel does not touch the low margin business, such as memory - they even exited the flash memory business, spinning off Numonyx (which is now a part of Micron). As a result, they don't have to water down wafer prices on their customers, with the result that the only customers they'd have would be the ones that have high margin products that few buy, and not the products where every die is a few cents and manufacturers try and make up razor thin margins on volume.

  11. Could win the mobile war? by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    iPhone - Not Intel Inside
    Android - Not Intel Inside
    Windows Phone - Not Intel Inside
    Blackberry - Not Intel Inside
    Tablets - Not Intel Inside
    Game Consoles - Not Intel Inside
    TV - Not Intel Inside
    Microwave - Not Intel Inside

    Lagging Ultrabook sales - Intel Inside
    Lagging Desktop sales - Intel Inside

    Did someone redefine the world Win?

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
    1. Re:Could win the mobile war? by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

      Did someone redefine the world Win?

      First they ignore your desktops, then they laugh at your mobiles, then they fight your on chip DRM, then you win.

    2. Re:Could win the mobile war? by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 1

      Windows Phone - Not Intel Inside
      Blackberry - Not Intel Inside

      Did someone redefine the world Win?

      I did not know it was possible to use the words "Windows Phone" or Blackberry and the word "win" the same sentence.

      I've been checking dictionaries, English textbooks and left a message with a professor to get back to me.

      --
      Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    3. Re:Could win the mobile war? by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      No, you seem to misunderstand the word "could". Intel will be bringing desktop level CPU performance to Tablets and smartphones. This means they will be taking ARM head on in that space. In the embedded market? Yeah, not so much.

  12. Intel will not "win" this war by steveha · · Score: 2

    For Intel to "win" the "mobile war" as the headline suggests, Intel would have to get the mobile device market to adopt proprietary Intel parts that only Intel can sell. Otherwise, Intel is just another vendor, and the mobile device makers can buy from Intel or not at their whim; Intel just being one of a group of commodity providers is not what Intel considers a "win".

    I've said it before: Apple will never lock themselves in with Intel.

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    1. Re:Intel will not "win" this war by unixisc · · Score: 1

      You mean, like they didn't when they discontinued PowerPC for.... Oh, wait!!!

    2. Re:Intel will not "win" this war by peragrin · · Score: 1

      Apple can switch to AMD, or apple controls the software, and the base OS is fairly cross platform, while the upper levels don't use much of platform specific optimizations.

      take a look at windows RT/ Windows 8 and compare it to Apple moving from PowerPC to Intel.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Intel will not "win" this war by unixisc · · Score: 1

      PPC was an architecture that Apple co-owned w/ IBM & Motorola/Freescale. Yeah, IBM & Motorola weren't delivering the power saving features for them, but it was an architecture to which Apple had the rights, and could have partnered w/ any of the third party PPC manufacturers. For instance, PA Semi, which Apple acquired, was making PPC microprocessors, not ARMs. Apple, after acquiring that company, had them make an ARM based line - the A series.

      At any rate, Apple could have gone to ARM even then, but simple fact of the matter is that ARM didn't have what their macs needed, so they went w/ Intel, and that too, their top of the line Xeons. Even after they had their A series, they've used it for the iPhones & iPads & iPods, but not their Macs. Doesn't that blow the theory of the OP that Apple will never lock themselves w/ Intel? Yeah, they can use AMD as well - which they don't, and MIPS too has been carving itself as a new choice for phones.

    4. Re:Intel will not "win" this war by unixisc · · Score: 1

      This is right - while it took Apple ages to introduce OS-X in the first place from NEXTSTEP, NEXTSTEP itself was somewhat quickly ported to SPARC and PA-RISC, while OS-X was parallelly developed on PPC & x86. It would be interesting to see how long it takes to port Mountain Lion to the A6 or A7.

      But yeah, the base OS is pretty portable, so it shouldn't be a problem.

    5. Re:Intel will not "win" this war by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      They acquired more than PA Semi. Exponential Technology at one time had the leading edge PPC implementation and they were eventually bought by Apple.

  13. The takeaway? Always *hear* your gut. by Gordo_1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What this story tells me is that while your gut instinct may or may not be offering you the best path forward, you owe it to yourself as a business leader to figure out why your gut contradicts the data. If all you do is make logical decisions based on easily available data, then you can probably be replaced by a simple algorithm that can make more reliable decisions than you anyway.

    In this case, Otellini had data in front of him, but his gut instinct contradicted the data-driven path forward. He ignored it and moved on, convinced that it was safer (?) to be on the side of the data. But the data led him astray. Why?

    Because he had partial data, data that was probably focused on previous mobile computing entries and little on Apple's recent design successes, superior user experiences and marketing capabilities. If he'd realized his gut was really signalling that they needed more and different kinds of data, I suspect Intel would have gone down a different path.

    1. Re:The takeaway? Always *hear* your gut. by gtall · · Score: 2

      But at the time, Intel didn't have a mobile processor that sipped energy like ARM's. So what was he going to offer? License ARM...again? Maybe the data told him his processors were dead fish for mobile and that he'd be better off waiting until Intel could catch up.

    2. Re:The takeaway? Always *hear* your gut. by Gordo_1 · · Score: 1

      Well evidently if he's lamenting not going with his gut, he's implying that there *was* a viable path to producing mobile chips and they *chose* not to risk their desktop/server business in pursuit of it.

    3. Re:The takeaway? Always *hear* your gut. by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Atom development was neglected for a long time and Intel used to use previous generation manufacturing processes to make Atom. Not exactly what you are supposed to do if you want to have major wins in the mobile market. Intel did it because Atom did not give them the same profit margins as their other processors. However the end result is they are losing share in the CPU market to ARM.

    4. Re:The takeaway? Always *hear* your gut. by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      But at the time, Intel didn't have a mobile processor that sipped energy like ARM's. So what was he going to offer? License ARM...again? Maybe the data told him his processors were dead fish for mobile and that he'd be better off waiting until Intel could catch up.

      What do you mean "again" - Intel sold XScale only half a year before the iPhone was announced. Apple must have contacted him about it long before that - the CPU is a central part of the design after all.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  14. Peope forget XScale so easily! by default+luser · · Score: 2

    Interesting but Apple developed iPhone over ~2 - 2.5 years. Depending on when the key players sat with Intel that likely would have been enough time to develop a first generation chip.

    Remember, Intel was THE LEADER in cutting-edge ARM chips until they sold the ARM division to Marvell in June 2006. They even introduced high-end feature like Mobile MMX and SpeedStep, and pushed clock speeds higher than any of their competitors.

    That's absolutely in the time-frame of iPhone development, plus a year into Paul's tenure. The fact that they sold the ARM division and decided to start back at square one with Atom (not exactly a power miser in the first revision) shows that they had no intention of going "high volume, low price" like Steve Jobs was asking.

    --

    Man is the animal that laughs.
    And occasionally whores for Karma.

    1. Re:Peope forget XScale so easily! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      like Steve Jobs was asking

      Also at the time a 'high end' phone was basically a wince box. Intel bet on MS being the king in this play field. Considering the number of wince devices they were moving at the time it was not a bad bet. Apple was a unknown. MS was a known. You can see why they went all in with x86. It was also quite clear Intel wanted out of the phone game at the time. Where all the cool kids were playing with 50 dollar razr flip phones... The high end market was such a low volume it was not worth messing with and palm and blackberry were moping it up anyway. Apple really changed the market with unlimited data. But it kept its cards so close to its chest it didnt bother telling its vendors...

    2. Re:Peope forget XScale so easily! by Pubstar · · Score: 1

      I hated my Razer. PPC 6700 was where it was at. people were jealous of my NES emulator on that thing.

  15. Re:Unavoidable Intel Tax by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    intel makes other families outside of the x86 ( like the strongarm) you dumb fuck

  16. Re:AMD for 90% by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

    Actually Intel probably earns more from laptops than desktops for a couple of years now. Otellini came to power after he headed the division which designed the Pentium M so he was behind that transition. Their issue was they were blindsided by the smartphone and tablet segments. I still remember Intel claiming the next big thing was going to be smart TVs. There the energy requirements were not as cumbersome. So they sold off XScale.

    AMD would probably be dead by now if not for two things: Dirk Meyer as a CEO driving new processor designs which are again (barely) competitive with Intel when previously they had no interesting CPU offerings and the PS4 and XBox Next console wins. It remains to be seen if the current management will keep funding R&D to remain competitive with Intel in performance or not. Their deal to buy ATI back when Hector Ruiz was CEO nearly killed AMD.