What surprises me is $721m seems like a lot for a product no one buys. Also surprised it's not worth employing 100 people bringing in $7m/yr/head. I would employing such people.
$721m divided by 97 would be applicable if the entire IoT group consisted of those 97 people but it's not. I can see that the article makes it confusing and some might interpret it as if Intel is laying off all the IoT employees. (I don't know how many total Intel IoT employees there are since Intel doesn't seem to not have publicized that headcount.)
My guess is that since Intel recently discontinued x86-based IoT boards (Joule, Galileo, and Edison), many of the layoffs are directly connected to that.
Intel is still in the IoT game but pursuing other strategies to compete with the low-power-more-efficient ARM-based IoT market.
it is very likely that they were actually making losses
I too suspect this was not a profit-in-the-now division. They were probably playing a long-term game. I think they ceded the game to someone else .. but who?
~550/580