Replies to post #142968 on Intel Corp (INTC)

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The bigger effect will be on Atom though forcing it to stay in the device price range it is now unless Broxton is a big jump.

Yep. Honestly Atom doesn't actually need to win in the high end of mobility to be a good processor for Intel, necessarily.

The meat of the market for a merchant chip vendor (as Qualcomm is painfully learning) is the low-end and the mid-range (Apple basically dominates the high end and I think this dominance will extend over time...all they had to do was make bigger iPhones to basically decimate the high end Android phone market) meaning that the products that really need to be best in class are SoFIA LTE and SoFIA MID and their progeny.

Problem is, I don't think Goldmont will even be a match for A72 by the time Intel actually launches its first 14nm SoFIAs. A72 on TSMC 16FF+/16FFC + nice Mali graphics is going to be a very hard combination to beat for Intel.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: unless Intel commits to a leadership portfolio of x86 CPU cores for mobility, it will make more sense for Intel to license ARM CPUs for these markets.

Additionally Qualcomm is not going to make it easy for Intel because it's bringing its top modem tech even to the low-end and mid-range SKUs, so unless Intel pulls its modem story together (it was looking good for a while but they have been lapped again) I honestly don't see Intel gaining much share in mobile anytime soon.

But you know what? If the PC market can just stabilize and basically be flat to slightly down from here on out as Intel has said, and if the company can keep up its data center group growth of 10%+ per year then Intel doesn't necessarily need ultra-mobile to work as a viable investment and I continue to own the stock even though I think the mobile story is a complete disaster.

And I plan to continue to hold Intel indefinitely...at the very least until my cost basis is zero from collecting dividends ;)

Worst case, Intel's long-term future is as a server/data center chip company. They are best in class in server CPUs and they are growing their chip content nicely here. And, to be perfectly frank, Intel's DCG is looking like a far more attractive business than Qualcomm's QCT (better margins, competitive positioning, roughly the same revenue level, etc.)