Intel Fights For Its Future (mondaynote.com)

An anonymous reader shares a post: The Smartphone 2.0 era has destroyed many companies: Nokia, Blackberry, Palm... Will Intel be another victim, either as a result of the proposed Broadcom-Qualcomm combination, or as a consequence of a suicidal defense move? Intel sees the Qualcomm+Broadcom combination as an existential threat, an urgent one. But rather than going to the Feds to try and scuttle the deal through a long and uncertain process, Intel is rumored to be "working with advisors" (in plainer English, the company's Investment Bankers) on a countermove: acquire Broadcom. Why the sudden sense of urgency? What is the existential threat? And wouldn't the always risky move of combining two cultures, employees, and physical plants introduce an even greater peril?

To begin with, the threat to Intel's business isn't new; the company has been at risk for more than a decade. By declining Steve Jobs' proposal to make the original iPhone CPU in 2005, Intel missed a huge opportunity. The company's disbelief in Apple's ambitious forecast is belied by the numbers: More than 1.8 billion iOS devices have been sold thus far. Intel passed on the biggest product wave the industry has seen, bigger than the PC. Samsung and now TSMC manufacture iPhone CPUs. Just as important, there are billions of Android-powered machines, as well. One doesn't have to assume 100% share in the smartphone CPU market to see Intel's gigantic loss.

Comments

Typical idiocy clickbait from the "editors"

[CajunArson]

As usual another stupid article full of line noise instead of anything intelligent to say.

Incidentally, if Intel is "fighting for its future" by making huge profits in a variety of areas then why the hell is Qualcomm -- the effective monopolist in smartphone wireless devices and also a huge player in smartphone SoCs -- even conceivably a target of a takeover? Why the hell isn't Qualcomm about to buy out Intel if Intel is so behind the curve and Qualcomm is supposedly so great?

Let's not even forget how this idiot "analysis" is somehow never applied to fanboy-favorite AMD who for some reason is destined for greatness without ever having made a single product that could be used in a mobile phone.

History

[DrYak]

Now, Intel also did never manage to come up with anything x86 that was suitable for a smartphone.

Worse.
They did never manage to come up with anything specifically running the x86 instruction set that was suitable for a smartphone.
They used to have a decent Intel-manufactured CPU running ARM instruction set, but somehow managed to abandon the market and sell it off, just at the time when ARM is getting even more relevant thanks to smartphones, routers and IoT.

Search for "Intel StrongArm" and "Intel XScale".

Note that, according to Wikipedia, Intel is still in possession of ARM license that they acquired when bought StrongArm.
So even after selling XScale out to Marvell, they could still start a new line of ARM core *now*, after having come to realization that the Atom doesn't scale down as much as they would have liked (isn't that well suited for smartphones and routers) and its x86 compatibility makes absolutely not sense in those markets (Seriously, nobody is going to run legacy Windows code on a smartphone)

AMD did not even try, because they understand CPUs and knew this architecture is not suitable for that field. But they went one step farther: They have server processors that include ARM cores.

I'm still hoping that, next to the ARM light-weight servers that they are targeting, these ARM cores will eventually also evolve to some high range phablets and dev boards.

Shed no tears for them.

[Gravis Zero]

Intel has a long history of anti-competitive behavior. One needs only search "Intel anti-competitive behavior" or see their Wikipedia page to recognize that it's a persistent and ongoing. Yes, they have brought advances to the semiconductor field but they have always behaved in the most unethical manner possible to subvert the competition.

I look forward to the rise of AMD.