>Customers will use 18A to dip their toes in the Intel waters with less critical chips that are not core to their business

Yeah...how many customers will use the most advanced tech for "less critical chips". The real question is not whether Intel's tech works...it's if they can mass produce it efficiently. 7nm worked just fine on a chip by chip basis...but they struggled for years on getting the yield and output to place where customers would want it.