1) Will Apple+Intel partnership produce a 2-in-1 laptop, and this will revive the 2-in-1 laptops in general?
Haven't heard anything about this.
2) 5G is still far away, so how does that look in the current telco landscape?
5G would not provide any significant revenue until the ~2020 timeframe.
3) Is it true that Intel ironically spent millions to get rid of good engineers in the 2016 ACT?
1.2 billion is the official number for "restructuring costs", could be higher than that. This includes site closures, relos, ISP/VSP/ERP packages, etc.
In terms of the quality of engineers being let go (from my observations), ISPs were a mixed bunch: some bad apples, some good guys with an undeserved SL4/SL5. However, VSPs/ERPs were overwhelmingly solid contributors and/or some of the most experienced managers/ICs around, in my opinion this is were Intel lost major talent and could have been even worse as I personally heard from some rock star types that did not take ERP due to personal/family reasons. Conversely, most a--hole managers and non-contributing brown nosers that should have been fired on the spot are still here.
4) The virtuous cycle will eventually have to deal with the fading away of big profit margins. ARM should be expected to take away market share in the server space, especially as servers shrink in size. Does Intel have plans to deal with the reality of living with small profit margins?
Does not seem to be the case, if anything they are pushing deeper into low-margin businesses such as IoT, memory, modems. I'm not convinced they are prepared for what these low-margin territories will mean for the company's future, such as much reduced R&D budget, little to no spending in new fab technology, etc.
Their big hope is to maintain ~15% growth in servers in order to keep some high margins, but so far this hasn't been the case as server has only been growing 10-12%. With additional competition coming from ARM, IBM and others, it could go down to ~8% in the next few years.
In short, no viable strategy as far as the eye can see.