Re: HP is the one systems house where Itanium has a long, long future.
If Itanium becomes a mostly HP product, Intel will let it wither and die.
Every time IBM sells a power CPU, it also gets to sell a bunch of $200 disks for $400. IBM can justify amortizing development costs for Power over boxes, not just CPUs.
Intel doesn't sell the disks and tape libraries that account for most of the cost of servers, so they must amortize development costs over CPUs (and perhaps chipsets and boards, but those bring along development costs of their own). If Intel can sell lots of Itaniums to Dell, IBM, Fujitsu-Siemans, HP, and white box makers, then they can amortize development costs over a high volume of CPUs, and it will make sense for them to stay aggressive in the business (e.g. continue to invest in keeping it competitive).
But if Itanium becomes primarily a high end niche product for HP, Intel will have to charge HP very high prices for the chips to cover fixed costs, and the result will likely be death spiral (high prices reduce volume, leading to fixed costs being allocated over fewer parts, leading to higher prices, leading to even lower volume, etc.).
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
