Intel Corp (INTC)

[Dmcq]

Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 performance powerhouse is going to be made mainly in Samsung's foundries, using the latest 14nm production process,

And quite right too I would guess as Samsung got to 14nm first as Qualcomm want to get the 820 out soon. TSMC now have their 16nm process working and from the A9 reports it seems like it is slightly better and rumors are they have better yield. I don't see any great knockout on this basis. Also TSMC have a good history of getting long term utilization of their foundries which gives them some space to fight short term problems if they arise. The most likely outcome is a duopoly will form, the only chance of some sort of competition for that now is if countries like China are willing to spend a fortune to be assured only their own spy hardware is on their chips or if Intel finally manages to change how it works rather drastically - neither of which I think are very likely.