anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on January 31, 2013 12:47 pm wrote:
> Richard Cownie (tich.delete@this.pobox.com) on January 31, 2013 12:25 pm wrote:
> > anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on January 31, 2013 6:45 am wrote:
> > > By designing and manufacturing ARM cores?
> > >
> > > This is surely what they are going to do if the market revenue
> > > gets large enough, and they fail to compete with x86.
> >
> > I don't doubt that Intel could design excellent ARM cores. However, I don't
> > believe that they could design ARM cores with sufficient advantage over the
> > competitors to command the high margins they get on many of their x86 cpu's.
> > So that wouldn't give them enough profit to keep making the investments
> > in fabs and R&D needed to stay far ahead.
> >
>
> Why not? If they already have manufacturing advantage, and they take ARM market share,
> ARM competitors now have less money to threaten Intel's lead. And they still have x86.

Because Qualcomm/Samsung/Nvidia etc already have ARM parts that are very good,
targeting smartphone/tablets with total system price of $100-400, and even if
Intel produced a part that was 2x faster, or used 2x less power, that would not be
a sufficiently compelling advantage to persuade a large fraction of the market
to spend a lot more money on a smartphone or tablet (especially since the "premium"
smartphone/tablet market is already occupied by Apple, which has its own cores
and chips).