Isn't Intel's loss of the lead largely because their fabs don't produce as many square metres of chips as TSMC and Samsung's fabs? Once those guys had more scale it was only a matter of time until their fabs became better than Intel's. Once they took the lead, the problem only compounds, since people are switching to AMD or ARM based chips and that moves even more of Intel's scale to TSMC and Samsung. It seems like a vicious circle for Intel.

Admittedly Intel having its own fabs looks good while everyone else is struggling for capacity, but I assume that will be fixed eventually. When it is, I expect Intel's decline to hasten.

Intel are already experimenting with using other people's fabs. I think this is their best path.