Sucsess(as measured in valuation back than, not today, that's how managers measure themselves), was far from certain.
It’s still a lesson on the importance of keeping a foothold for the lowest volume market even if you’re not making any money as long as the cost is sustainable - cutting every unprofitable part of the business leaves you for disruption. Same thing happened to Microsoft with smartphones and Google with social.
Intel had a cellular modem business which they formed in 2011 and sold to Apple in 2019.
They acquired* from Infineon. And completely messed it up.
Magic is finding out what of those can fly and it is not a manager but a leader quality to do well with new fields. Although sometimes managers feel the obvious moves for the short term sometimes better.
Sure, it can be hard to know when to stay in, but the “death by a thousand cuts” is not a financial problem. These are often rounding errors to continue. It’s a question of focus. And Intel clearly made the mistake of thinking they didn’t need to focus on mobile.
Qualcomm still has a 60-70%+ market share in the $300+ Android phone market and their gross profit margin was similar to Intel until last year so it's obviously doable. And XScale/Intel was probably the best positioned company to dominate the ARM SoC market back in the mid 2000s.