Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

Dear ol Swanee strikes again:

https://wccftech.com/intel-ceo-beyond-cpu-7nm-more/

That article is very interesting. It basically states that Swan doesn't expect Intel to compete with AMD for the foreseeable future. That basically means they are giving in, leaving their side open for AMD to attack. They want to concentrate on the foundry side of things, at least that's how I interpret it (not possible to capture 30% of the global semiconductor market without foundry and memory business - they sold their memory business to Micron lately, again at the most stupid timing one could imagine.

For AMD, this is very good news (ok, it may have been meant as a distraction, but Intel staff got the message too, so ...). This is very, very dangerous for Intel. They leave their core cash cow business open for competition to prioritize seeking for new business in an area where Intel has failed in the past. Foundry business was meant to be an important source of revenue for Intel for many years already, but Krzanich didn't succeed with it really. To compete with the big foundries, you also have to be flexible and cost competitive, which is very hard to do. Intel doesn't seem to have the skills for it, otherwise they would have succeeded while they had a competitive edge in semiconductor process tech (at 22nm and 14nm). Now they are even behind in this field (foundries at 7nm and transitioning to EUV and 5nm soon). In such a situation and stating to compromise one's core business (which is raking in all those dollars needed for new process tech) is absolutely nuts. If Intel loses more to AMD in market share, they won't have the money to compete with TSMC and Samsung, falling behind further and fully leaving their core business to AMD.

Stay away!