Replies to post #120962 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Golfbum]

My best guess is that Intel's offerings at 22nm will do well in tablets whether Android or Win8x and capture significant share rather quickly.

I'm not as optimistic about the phones since the qualification cycle is lengthy. But the 22nm silicon should increase Intel share over where it is today and give them a good base to ramp from when the 14nm silicon is ready.

gb

[wbmw]

This form of logic argument was made by Paul Otellini in reference to smart phones. That X-86 would offer compelling reason for phone makers to abandon ARM and embrace Intel. But by the time Intel actually produced useable offerings, a software base had evolved to do without the X-86 network effect.

That argument might have failed in phones, but it pretty much worked like a charm when it came to stunting Windows RT - and perhaps even killing it outright.

Otellini had argued that PC compatibility was important to people, and he was right - he just missed the idea that people would also embrace bifurcating their compute experience between multiple operating systems and architectures - and you can't exactly blame him for that, either. No one would have predicted that Google would create an operating system that would outsell Microsoft - until they went ahead and did it.

But back to what Intel can do in phones - they can win on behalf of the things that people do care about. They can design power efficient cores that perform exceptionally well, deliver better battery life, and a more responsive experience.

While some ARM vendors are inching up in power and sacrificing these things - if Intel can deliver a leadership manufacturing process, then they can achieve the best performance at better power efficiency - and they can do it without paying wafer margins to the foundries, or licensing fees to ARM and Imagination.

Of course, the bull thesis has been repeated here enough times that I shouldn't have to reiterate it.