One would hope HN commenters would be able to comprehend a microchip seller not having compelling products to sell means it needs to shrink its business, rather than jump to childish “CEO bad guy” sentiments.
Shrinking the business is a hard decision to reverse, and one should definitely read into the word "needs" from "needs to shrink" before doing it. People tend to take any claim that a gigantic company "needs" to downsize with a gigantic grain of salt, because we were born with pattern recognition.
The business had already shrunk 10+ years ago when it was evident mobile devices were the future and Intel had no product offering for them.
It was do or die a decade or two ago to catch up in that market, but they didn’t bother paying sufficient salaries and focusing on the growing markets, so here they are.
> On June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel's XScale PXA mobile processor assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale PXA business to Marvell Technology Group for an estimated $600 million in cash and the assumption of unspecified liabilities. The move was intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses.
So they got out of the world’s biggest new market 1 year before iphone came out.
> 2007 - Apple launches the iPhone, helping kick off a mobile phone boom that Intel mostly missed. Under CEO Paul Otellini, Intel turned down a deal to make iPhone processors because it did not stand to profit enough from the arrangement. Instead, Apple used chips based on designs from Arm Holdings , whose tech now dominates the mobile market.
The leaders from 20 years ago made the bed that Intel now has to sleep in.
This is just one example. No one is making the argument that Intel would not be failing now had they retained XScale.
Intel has one trick (x86 and a process lead) and actively sabotages all other endeavors. Oh there other trick, because they streamlined certain aspects of production, is that they have a SKU explosion.
