Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Intel is too big to fail. They will get a bailout.

@eb at the time, Intel didn’t have the volumes to justify EUV.
As EUV costs came down, only then could they engage. This was due to missing smartphones.

I’m going to be the rare reply in favor of OP. Missing the boat on smartphones hurt — but failing to develop an EUV node and get IFS rolling during the late teens when we were burning money we desperately need now on buybacks was our death blow

@at Obviously Andy Bryant and PSO should have had better insights to what was coming, as that is what they are paid to do.

At the time, a person without those insights might have thought that smartphones were merely the next platform for x86 expansion. Keep in mind that Android phones were still not a thing either, so all that existed was a potential new product from Apple, and the existing Blackberry and Nokia dominance.

But like I say, figuring out where the market will be over the next 5 years is their job.

I once walked part Andy in the parking lot somewhere around 2015, and he looked like a defeated man. He was the model for Stacey Smith, another CFO stuffed shirt who could not strategize his way out of a paper bag. Why is he still on the Board?

Intel was the leader in CPUs for smartphones, in early days. Intel CPUs powered HP Pocket PC which was a predecessor to smartphones.

@d6 Actually, Intel was just being used by Jobs as a second source, when Jobs knew that he was going to use TSMC. Google it. Intel had little chance of ever getting that business, but did also make a mess of the analysis.

Intel sold the ARM development because PSO (or Andy Bryant whispering in his ear) saw it as a threat to the effort to create an x86 phone product using Atom.

All this stuff is widely documented ancient history and LBT is not PSO.

To keep going on about how Intel got to where it is might be an early sign of dementia, so see a doctor if so afflicted.

@a8 The OP and this guy are actually agreeing. Intel made chips for smartphone, decades ago. But the margins were not as good as x86 because they had just released the first product and ELT decided to sell off the entire ARM department that had barely just got going.

Financialization(stock buy backs) is a way to easily drive stock prices up in the environment of cheap interest rates. Prior to 1982, it was seen as a means of manipulating stock.

5 successive generations bad CEOs any questions, PSO, BK, Bob, Pat, Dave/MJ and now LBT

Retired in 2016 after 27 years. All of my colleagues in TD felt PSO was the wrong choice for CEO. He was the beginning of the end. He was simply another caretaker of the x86 moat, a moat that is all but gone today.

Craig Barrett was the last CEO who got it. I attended an employee forum with CRB. When asked about the greatest risk to Intel he was simple and direct. “Inability to innovate outside of x86 which has become a creosote bush”.

I don't believe OP knows finance.

CEOs did it

No, the company was sunk by a bunch of incompetent id--ts who managed it for years. Those fools could debate whether the letter "e" in the logo should be lower or higher, but they couldn’t make competent decisions about the company’s development. Intel had all the cards in its hand: it had a license for ARM Xscale processors, it had low-power chip technology from Transmeta, and yet, in the end, the bunch of id--ts sold the ARM chip license, shut down the development of Transmeta’s technology (Moonrun), and wanted to produce phone chips based on x86... I’ve always been fascinated by what a bunch of id--ts ran that company.

It all leads back to continuous bad decisions by inept management.

Giving to AB a powerful role by PSO was a big big mistake. AB was a key advisor to PSO. His advice would have been key PSO deciding iPhone chips & XBox chips aren't a viable business.

No, it didn’t.
Smartphones did.