Intel didn't miss the smartphone market. It simply made no sense (and still makes no sense) to go after a less profitable market.
When the margins on x86 cross below that of ARM chips, Intel will come in and destroy all the ARM manufacturers.
When the margins on x86 cross below that of ARM chips, Intel will come in and destroy all the ARM manufacturers.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/paul-o...
And I'm not so sure they'll be able to go into ARM fabbing that easily. Margins of X86 are high, but they are selling less of them, so expanding to new market would have been a wise move.
To their credit, they tried twice and couldn't make it work. Not sure if things could have been different considering ARM is a licensable architecture other people can use.
Unless the world has moved on. Profitability happens over time, so even declaring a market unprofitable may shut you out for ever.
Intel turned down a boat load of free money.