Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

Why not build fewer fabs and reduce your risk of capacity forecasting for external customers?

That's simple: First of all, you would have to close existing fabs - ok, no big deal. Secondly: You have to pay for the new process technology, independent of how much capacity you build. Sure, you could develop a 10nm process for a fab with just 1000 wafers a year, but how is that going to be profitable? It is not just the fab capacity that increases with a smaller process but also the costs to develop that process increase, therefore you need more chips to pay for that. x86 is, sooner or later, not going to pay for it.