Replies to post #143371 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

I think it is still the lack of integration which holds off Intel's success in mobile. I don't know what makes them take so many years to integrate a modem - it kind of sounds ridiculous. Big Intel can't integrate its own (!) modem within years of development. That's confusing, to say the least.

In any case, when they finally start executing, they are competitive in that space. I have no reason to doubt it. Yes, tick tock won't be enough and they may still struggle in the higher end but they have a much better cost position, at least in theory. Once they finally start to use it, they will penetrate the market and weaken the ARM ecosystem. Intel's army of engineers has to finally deliver, it's really unbelievable for me how much they failed in the past. I don't think it is a lack of capability, though.

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Of course it will work when measured over a longer timespan like 5-10 years.

I don't share your confidence.

Where was Atom in tablets and phones a couple years ago ?

Under-powered, under-spec'd chips with minimal market share of the combined tablet+phone market, exactly as it is today. The more things change...

Nowhere and now it is a significant player in tablets and an emerging player in phones when most said that x86 could not compete at that level.

They're a "significant player" in tablets but they had to lose a lot of money to make their chips usable by OEMs. Also, the tablet market really represents the absolute worst part of the mobile world. Much smaller unit volume than phones and much less stringent silicon requirements.

Think about a tablet. It doesn't need to have a cutting edge camera, it doesn't need to have cutting edge LTE (even Apple puts old LTE silicon into their iPads), and it doesn't need to have cutting edge performance (only Apple bothers to make targeted tablet silicon for tablets; everyone else just recycles 1-2 generation old phone chips).

And, to top it all off, the tablet market is now shrinking.

In phones Intel is basically nowhere, market share not even 1% most likely. Intel does not have leadership in ANY IP block that goes into a phone SoC (CPU, GPU, modem/DSP, ISP, media engines, etc.) today, and it's pretty telling that as the big mobile vendors show off next generation silicon (Kirin 950, Snapdragon 820, Exynos 8890, etc.), Intel has kept mum.

This is all a pretty clear indication that Intel's 2016 mobile products aren't going to be that good.

But like I said, Intel doesn't need mobile to be a good investment; DCG is an awesome business and PCs will probably stabilize.

[Dmcq]

but with a better cost structure than its fabless competition.

You keep on talking about fablesss as though it had a basic cost. It doesn't. If you have to do A and B to produce C there is no special cost in having A company doing A then B company doing B compared to C company doing A+B.

Intel has advantages in that its fab talks to chip design, the designers and the manufacturers are more integrated together. The fabless designers and the pure play foundries lose that degree of integration - but they do talk quite well to one another and their interfaces are well defined. To put the opposite side from integration compare Russia and its five year plans with how well Hong Kong and its tiny little body shops did.