Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on September 29, 2013 11:25 am wrote:
> none (none.delete@this.none.com) on September 29, 2013 2:15 am wrote:
> > I bet #2 is a non-issue: Intel will surely do everything they can to gain market share
> > even selling their chips with basically $0 profit.
>
>
> Why would they? What does buying market share get them, aside from fooling their
> shareholders into thinking they are having success in the mobile market?
>
> All those masses of Android phones could switch to x86 rather easily. They could also switch
> back to ARM equally easily, the day Intel decides they need to actually make a decent profit on
> their SoCs and ARM is once again a better alternative. Or do you think Intel would be willing
> to make enough Atom SoCs to supply the entire Android market for long enough to destroy the ARM
> ecosystem? (And hope they don't run into monopoly issues in the US, or more likely the EU)
>
> Qualcomm makes a lot of money in this market, they could engage in a price war with Intel for years
> if they felt Intel was trying to leverage Atom SoCs to steal the market for their baseband chips (and
> how could they believe otherwise, with Intel looking to add wireless radios to its offerings)
>
> Who is going to be hurt more here, Qualcomm, who doesn't have super-expensive fabs to
> fill and would be receiving checks from Intel for every unit they sell due to all their
> patent holdings, or Intel, who would end up with more Atom wafer starts than Core wafers
> if they tried to serve the entire Atom market, none of which makes any profit?

Stacy Smith recently said in an interview that marketshare was the goal. They will slowly kill off any part of the ARM ecosystem that can't keep up with their progress year after year. They view it as a marathon not a sprint. There would be no monopoly issues as Intel is the one starting from a zero base. Qualcomm already makes very little money from its phone chips especially as it's continually in price wars with Chinese vendors, it gets most of its money from licensing. 32nm Atom will be the last Atom not sold at a profit, 22nm Silvermont and the following generations will make money, eventually lots of it.