Intel made a huge mistake 10 years ago. Now 12,000 workers are paying the price.

[wunderhacker]

@LinusTech@Slick

"Ironically, Intel is now suffering the same fate that it inflicted on an earlier generation of computing innovators three decades ago."

 

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11463818/intel-iphone-mobile-revolution

[HoiDaniel]

We can't foresee the future.. BMW is not willing to co-operate with apple for their cars. Maybe apple cars will be the next big thing in 10 years.

[Bananasplit_00]

the intel chips that they were going to produce for the Iphone would have been a gamble, i honstly think they made the right decition at the time, there was no way for them to know that the Iphone was going to become one of the most revolutionary things in computing at the time

[Coaxialgamer]

The problem is intel won't be truely competitive against ARM in the mobile department until they design a proper RISC chip . X86 and CISC simply aren't suited for very low power devices. 

[GoodBytes]

This thread does not meet the posting guideline for Tech News, and therefore moved out of the Tech News section:

 

[Castdeath97]

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

This thread does not meet the posting guideline for Tech News, and therefore moved out of the Tech News section:

 

Also that title needs work, it would be better to specify what that mistake was.

[rhyseyness]

Tbh, if anyone can catch up, Intel can.

Wouldn't surprise me if they dominate the mobile market in 10 years, just like they dominate the PC market now

[AyeJayKay]

Companies are beginning to feel the effects of Steve Job's post-PC era. Yes, PCs will still be around but the growth of mobile computing cannot be denied and now Intel is paying for it.

[NumLock21]

10 years from now, Intel regrets laying off 12,000 of its employees because they can't make a proper cpu and AMD is way ahead of them.

Sucks for those who, studied extremely hard to get a degree, so they can work at their dream job, only to find out their dream job won't last forever. Intel only has themselves to blame for their wrong decision.

[Mark77]

I personally think the "big mistake" was Sandy Bridge's pricing.  They cut the pricing dramatically in excess of what the market would have paid.  They sort of realized that with subsequent CPU releases, and prices have been slowly rising, but there was no reason to deliver the i7-2600 for $250 back in 2011 when the market would have consumed them at $500 a pop. 

 

But on that note, the entire electronics/computer industry has been caught in a deflationary quagmire for a long time.  Usually when someone can make a better product, they can charge more for it.  Yet in the computer industry, when companies make a better product, they seem to always charge less for it.  Which is intuitively backwards. 

 

Also, it doesn't help that the computer industry, particularly in the United States, has done a lot of things to create overcapacity in the sector, such as offshoring/outsourcing of key proprietary technologies, and the extensive use of foreign guest workers on the H-1B visa.  Thus contributing to deflationary pressure in the sector. 

[vanished]

Amazing the impact these little choices can have down the road.  Just think if some of the early IBM/Microsoft deals had gone slightly differently, for example

[elago]

If Intel is now stalling and AMD is doing relatively poorly, they're more of a budget option, who's getting the sales that others are lacking?

 

I assume there are more factors in play, like the fact that there may not be sales to split in the first place, but yeah. 

[vanished]

11 minutes ago, elago said:

If Intel is now stalling and AMD is doing relatively poorly, they're more of a budget option, who's getting the sales that others are lacking?

 

I assume there are more factors in play, like the fact that there may not be sales to split in the first place, but yeah. 

Exactly.  If everyone slows down progress, there will be less incentive to upgrade and total sales will just go down.

[harrynowl]

Well the original Atom type CPUs were far from SoCs, they required a separate chipset that used more power than the chip itself cause they opted to use some ancient old one (945 iirc) 

[ThomasD]

Behold the awesome power of hindsight.

 

It just doesn't seem quite so salacious to note that the foresight, planning, and diligence of intel people are the only reasons why anyone at the company still has a job.

[BrightCandle]

I don't think its really about this. Intel is seeing a slowing of growth in its PC CPUs and there is a reason for that but its not really growth in mobile replacing PCs, because most people are buying tablets and mobile phones as additional computing devices not as their only device.

 

The reality is Intel only competes with itself, its CPUs need to be worth a sale over and above what people already have, and frankly since 2005 they haven't offered people a lot of reasons to upgrade. When gamers are choosing to stick with Sandy Bridge CPUs imagine the average household running word and the internet they really don't need an upgrade. Its the slowing of progress in CPUs that is dropping their sales, whereas mobile is a separate thing that is happening.

 

Intel could have got into the mobile market had it wanted to but it really wasn't in the SOC market at all so it would have been a big jump to do quickly for that product. But that was an additional market they passed on. The "PC is dead" has been getting boring and stale and old for 20 years now its never been true and its still not true.