You tell me who expected this in 2007, and then I will grant you that Intel should have known better.
Bottom line is, Intel's management got paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS per year to "see it", and they led many of us to believe that they'd have their mobile act together by 2013 and would be "extending leadership" in 2014/2015 (I'll find the slide another time). You think MY expectations were off base? Here's what Intel told me, the hapless shareholder who paid for his shares with his own money, back in 2012:
They were wrong. Very, very wrong. At the end of the day, management failed to grow the top and bottom lines and it failed to deliver on its goals in mobile in a big way. This is the definition of "incompetence" - failure to deliver on your targets to deliver shareholder value.
I want Intel to succeed, and I still think they can, but I just have to have some piece of evidence, some sign that they will. Right now, all I see is MediaTek gobbling up the low end, Qualcomm owning the high end, and Intel's core PC market falling apart as it throws ~$3B+ into the mobile investment incinerator on an annual basis.
Beamer, I'm not accusing Intel's management of incompetence. I haven't seen any indication that Intel fumbled the ball Manning-style.
But I do expect them to have better foresight than us common folk. Otherwise, they will forever be followers in the Brave New World of mobile devices, and their clear manufacturing strengths would go to waste.