The MBLY deal all but confirms this.
It's a sign of flailing management desperately seeking growth outside of the core x86 markets. This huge price implies a much lower return on capital for Intel going forward.
We also saw this with the reduced investments in Oregon and elsewhere for the core CPU development teams opening the door for AMD and others to take share.
We also see increasing costs related to 10nm and beyond, putting further pressure on returns.
Microsoft publically stated that 50% of its data center needs can be met with ARM. They are also pushing an ARM client strategy with full Windows emulation o ARM.
Machine learning in the data center can be served with Nvidia GPUs or custom ASICs (Google TPU)
Android / chrome ARM books are getting pushed by Samsung.
The client is in total free fall with most people getting their compute needs from smartphones and tablets.
Loss of process leadership to the foundries also implies AMD could get a better process than Intel for the first time ever leading to even more erosion.
Intel is in a very dangerous and precarious position. In 5 years this will be a much much smaller company.
You can thank the clueless board and their parade of clowns such as Otellini and BK.