I don't know if it's the salary delta so much as Intel feels like the modern version of Fairchild, IBM, or Sperry-Rand; business-suit wearing lifers more interested in defending their established market than creating new ones or competing with themselves.*

So as the Andy Grove generation retired out, very competent and talented but ultimately risk-averse replacements came in.

So they failed to make meaningful inroads into mobile and are now getting flanked by the myriad of companies who did as those companies are moving upstream with lower power, lower heat and thus potentially more scalable chips.

Intel also failed to rise to the occasion of "pivot or preserve" and just went to a "preserve at all costs" strategy even when it was clearly not working out for them. Chips got delayed 6 months, then 12, then 18, then got redefined just to get something marginally better out as their true intentions continually got pushed further.

And now, instead of say, sniping some stars from Rockchip or the other amazing up and comers, they did a reorg from within; a very GE/Texas Instrument style move that usually does not work - especially when you have already passed a generational changing of the guards.

But they have plenty of market still captured, a continued strong brand identity in the vast majority of the public, plenty of money to pad a runway and plenty of decent products so there's still significant time to turn their ship around and not continue to ignore every word of every book of Jack Trout, Al Ries, Clayton Christensen, Geoffrey Moore, and Steve Blank. First they need to stop believing "it can't happen here" when it's clearly already happening here.

If they don't, they might become another Bethlehem Steel or Sears; deftly unable to read the cards despite evidence attacking them from all directions. They need to realize their old ways will not carry them into a new world.

Look how Microsoft flipped. As a hardcore Linux user I would have never thought I'd ever be giving cash to Microsoft (via GitHub and Azure), and monthly at that! These things are possible: "When losing ground focus on your potential instead of preserving position"

Even after whatever AMD is going to say on October 8 and whatever Nvidia is going to do with ARM, the chip ball is still in Intel's court for now and it's still their game to lose. I am pretty confident they will figure out this rough patch and a substantial recovery will come (come see my stock positions if you don't believe me). My tune may change in 6 months...

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* The modern Sperry-Rand, at Unisys, for instance, is STILL maintaining their UNIVAC operating system - why? Good question. Do they think that's still a potentially winning hand? A path for recapturing a market they lost 60 years ago as if say, somehow hot new startups will start choosing OS 2200 running on Univacs? I don't know either. I downloaded and tried their free virtualized x86 version about 6 months ago just to see what it was like and I got a high-touch white-glove sales-treatment of emails and phone calls. It all felt very desperate. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200 and https://www.unisys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath...). I wish them the best of luck, they'll need it.