Guys, I do think the air is getting a bit thin for Intel. If Qualcomm really is able to top the performance of ARM's A72 and they'll release it this year, things start to get ugly for Intel. The performance of these chips is beginning to threaten Intel's business. Yes, I know, these benchmarks are all lying, these are all not high performance CPUs and so on, but if Intel isn't fighting them right now and do it seriously, these competitors have enough money to also go against Intel's core business. It's just a matter of time. Intel needs to be better than all of them, otherwise, sooner or later, they'll also be better than Intel in servers and one day in desktops. All that money from mobile (and memory in case of Samsung) is financing them their leading edge fabs. Yes, Intel is ahead, but that's by one year and Samsung seems to execute aggressively with their process advances. I wouldn't expect a big lead for Intel at 10nm anymore, not with their capital spending they can afford. Maybe half a year, not more.
Look, Intel has 14nm for quite some time now. Why aren't there 14nm mobile chips in the market? Why don't they have their damn modem integrated already? That really is an issue they could have seen years ago, together with the integration issues in mobile in general. What the heck were these guys thinking?
Why is Cherry Trail just a process shrink, without improvement of the CPU (yes, GPU is updated, which is more than necessary)? Does Intel really think they can continue with their lame tick tock stuff in mobile against these guys? Releasing one architectural CPU upgrade while the competition releases 2 or even 3? WTF? Do they really think they can get away with 10% performance improvements of their main CPU core? That's not the way how they can defend a 50 billion dollar business.
I stick with my investment case: Either Broxton delivers on all fronts and sells well (and that at least at breakeven price), with integrated high end modem by the second half of 2016 in devices, or Intel will be in deep trouble. This is not going to end well.
Intel as a foundry business with some server, most PC and some IOT share? This is going to end badly. This competition will, sooner or later, eat into Intel's core business and I don't want to be part of that when it happens.
Luckily, the Windows 10 upgrade cycle is likely to give some more upside to Intel's shares and Wallstreet doesn't care much about mid-long term prospects. So there's enough time to wait and see what happens 2016 before pulling the trigger.
