They focused on cost cutting and stock buybacks instead of, you know, the extremely advanced R&D that making new integrated circuit technologies and incorporating them into products at scale requires.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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First thing you do after a bad quarter is to fire some thousands of engineers at random
Speculation on my part but i think it’s the same thing as Boeing really. They didn’t have any real competition for so long and they started cutting out the engineers who innovated to improve stock price.
Nokia is another example. They were leading in mobile tech, only to struggle keeping up with smart phones.
They’re so heavily optimized in old tech they can’t adapt to new tech.
I'd say they just didn't go touchscreen in time I remember a friend having the first iPhone and another had a Nokia n95 The N95 was way ahead in features and technology but people wowed over the Apple screen..
They also did other weird decisions like focusing on Symbian, and then move all their attention on Windows. Nobody cared about Symbian or Windows. Everything was on Android and iOS.
They were too slow to adapt to the new market, and when they adapted they did so in the wrong way.
I had a Nokia touchscreen smartphone (Nokia 5800) and it was awful
The iPhone was launched 2 years before that, but I couldn’t afford it, assumed that Nokia did a comparable job. Boy how I was wrong!
There used to be a saying that Intel had a vault where they paid out the next ten years of CPU tech, so when they invented something new they put it there so they could make profits and control the advancement.
Now, I’m not sure which thing they got wrong, but if it was true, I think Intel was probably caught off guard by all the speculative execution security issues and the GPU revolution (blockchain and AI).
I agree, the speculative execution failure feels like the start of the bad times for modern Intel.
This happens when a MBA CEO ran an engineering company. Where did we hear that before?.. Something something Boeing.
Tim Apple is an MBA. Is the company struggling?
He is a supply chain guy. He did a tremendous job on making sure you need for every single thing on an apple device either an adapter or a repair that cost more than the device itself. Since Tim took over, the only noticable succeful disruption from a technological perspective is Apples M silicon. The rest is old wine in new bottles. For the rest its upselling and people that are crazy enough to put 1200 dollar/euro down for a phone or an 8gbyte RAM Mac. And to be straight, I have no problems with that. But there might be a time where Apple ends up in that same corner.
They did an attempt at VR, just because it didn't sell doesn't mean they didn't make technically the most capable VR set
At that price, they weren't going to sell much. What jackass thought people other than the most rabid fanbois was going to spend $3500 on a beta version of tech that hasn't got a killer app yet?
It's easy to make the most capable product if you disregard the price point completely.
They did an attempt at VR
but it was a me-too attempt, almost a copycat of existing hardware... hardly innovative
I mean, it kinda sounds similar... what's the last innovative product from Apple?
Apple was never really that innovative. Their business model was to take recent innovations, like handheld computers, package them up all nice and shiny, and market the hell out of them. That's what sold the iPod, even though there have been plenty more technically superior devices. Same with all their other products.
You’re not wrong. I’d argue the iPhone was quite innovative. I laughed when I heard Apple was gonna take on Nokia. Nokia was a juggernaut at the time. Apple presented Nokia’s proverbial head two years later. Quite the turnover. Apple is still living off iPhone profits 15+ years later.
They're living off the rent from older products. What's their last innovation? Vision Pro??
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The Intel CEO had always come from engineering fab. This kept the high level decisions made by somebody who understood the product and how it was made.
Then CEO and the head of fab was caught sexually harassing employees. They were both shown the door. So no CEO and the guy who was next in line were gone. They needed the number 2 in fab to take over fab to keep production up.
So the board decided to make the CFO the new CEO. A guy who had a MBA was running a chip company that had only been run by engines.
Profits went up for a while but then Intel struggled to maintain innovation and properly upgraded fab and chip design. Add the increasing skill of rivals and a increase in importance in chips other then server and desktop. which were the only areas Intel was king. It's a recipe for failure.
Sounds exactly what like what you will expect if a finance guy takes over a company. Rip.
The fastest way to save money is to stop spending money. Shut down the business and sell everything off brings in billions and costs nothing. Pure profit and I get huge bonuses! — Most financial/Wall St vultures
A combination of resting on their laurels during AMD's lost decade, and failure to retain competitive process technology during the extended gestation and ultimate failure of their non-EUV 10nm node. The arrogance of taking their foot off the gas and assuming nobody would ever catch back up to them backfired hard.
This is not entirely fair though, they spend more than $10 billion over 10 years trying to compete against Arm, but the effort failed despite they had the production process advantage at the time. To get a better picture of the the Intel effort, they spend more on the effort than the entire Arm revenue in that period!
But Noohh ISA doesn't matter they say. 😂 🤣
You mean the decade where they tried to make arm processors and gave up just before smartphones became popular or the decade where they tried and failed to make x86 processors for smartphones ?
The decade they tried to make X86 compete with Arm on smartphones.
I have changed "with Arm" to "against Arm" which I suppose could have caused the doubt.
TSMC
edit: downvote all you want, the fundamental circuit level design is not in question here... it's how you make the damn thing and TSMC can do it better. intel talks a big game yet continues to fail on delivering any of it. i'll believe half of what they say when i see it... and it helps that good ol' uncle sam is helping them out, they're gonna need it.
AMD is rumored to move to Samsung for its GPUs. Samsung basically caught up to TSMC and it's offering good deals on its advanced nodes.
They put a MBA in charge, which are notorious for only caring about short term results with the most amount of money. MBA + public company = bad long term.
Intel's CEO is an engineer.
I believe they're talking about the damages made by Bob Swan, the previous CEO who is indeed an MBA and was CFO of Intel before.
No mention of mobile? Intel completely missed the chance to make the CPUs we are all holding in our hands.
They had a line of mobile arm based processors that were powering windows mobile devices but they sold that division to Marvell 6 months before the launch of the iPhone, in order to focus on x86
Intel has also made a similar blunder by trying GPUs and abandoning them (they got there early with the i740, then Larrabee). Saving a few dollars by gutting emerging products line has cost them billions
One of those decisions that only looks worse as time goes on
It's even in the post blurb...
Honestly, I'm looking forward to see what Intel can do in the dedicated GPU market. Their last card was certainly quite exciting in its own way.
I fully switched to AMD years ago,mainly cause of Linux,but I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for good Intel GPUs. The market needs more competition.
in its* own way
Indeed, thank you
When they didn't have a stranglehold on the market anymore because they let their R&D falter, they didn't have the ability to do things like make ECC ram a "server" motherboard thing and artificially jack prices.
Intel has been a shit company for years now. They're paying the price of hubris and everyone that's been taken for a ride by them is leaving now that there's choices.
When one of your medium-sized customers felt the need to build their own processor design team, you’re in trouble. When their new design beats yours, you’re done.
Hubris
Personally I think that a tiny bit of it is the discovery of all the security issues in the chips, making the big companies want to use their chips less or develop their own. The MINIX revelation, the security vulns, backdoors, etc just made them a terrible company for anything secretive.
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