I still don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of „missing the iPhone“.
There was no money in mobile SoCs, and there still isn’t. Apple makes their own chips anyway!
Intel was right to focus on the x86.
There was no money in mobile SoCs, and there still isn’t. Apple makes their own chips anyway!
Intel was right to focus on the x86.
Qualcomm market cap: $193 billion
TSMC market cap: $888 billion
Seems designing and fabbing SoCs is plenty valuable
Taiwan Semi's market cap is $888 billion. They're - remarkably - now worth 10x what Intel is.
In any other context, that might be splitting hairs but it’s a meaningful distinction in this conversation.
Even though I sent my prints out to be printed by shapeways or whatever, I still tell people "I made" those parts.
Intel didn't just miss out on business as a fab, Apple would have used their chip design as well.
Which leads you to wonder if Apple still would have begun designing chips themselves, if Intel had put some real effort into designing mobile chips.
I think it's safe to say that they had already selected an off the shelf Samsung CPU before they did the public demo of the device.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9708/analyzing-apple-statemen...
I suspect if anyone else could keep up with TSMC Apple would still dual source.
But between their lead and the benefits of being such a big customer they get first crack at the cutting edge stuff, single sourcing manufacturing probably makes the most sense.
And their interests are aligned, unlike their dependencies on MS/Adobe/Motorola/IBM/Intel.
Intel could have moved big volumes during that period. At the very least they could have been a fab.
They also largely switched to their own chips because vendors weren’t meeting their needs.
Again, Intel could have staved it off on both computers and phones if they didn’t mess up so badly on delivery over the last several years.
Apple can only do that now, because of the billions they have made on the iPhone, plain and simple.
And - more importantly - they were well geared to do that, since the beginning of computing.
There being no money in SoC's, is because they're all being made across the other side of the planet, mostly, from the intended final users.
If Intel were really 'leading edge', they'd have made desk-side custom fabrication a thing in the makerspace already. Such that I can, as a computer user, print 10 or 20 or X little chips, for my own specific purposes, non-mass-market.
This would be a truly revolutionary adventure from a 'grandfather of computing' style company.
Alas, the x86 is, indeed, everywhere. Grandfather Intel has a massive garden.
If only the SoC battles were truly localized, and a real computing revolution can happen (before its too late).
You should have a locally-built device in your hand.