Why is Intel getting further and further away from us?

Latest update time：2015-04-20

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OFweek Electronic Engineering Network: According to our background statistics, there is a 90% chance that you will not see this article on a product with Intel Inside printed on it.

This is not surprising, as the last time you saw an Intel-powered phone was probably eight years ago (if you saw one at all). According to Intel's earnings report released this morning, Intel's PC and mobile processor business fell 8% in the last three months compared to the same period last year. You can't tell how much money Intel lost on mobile products because Intel combined mobile and PC numbers last quarter . The mobile losses were hidden.

Earlier last month, Intel cut its first-quarter revenue forecast, causing the company's market value to evaporate by more than $ 7 billion.

In the past three months, Intel's only bright spot was the 19% growth in its data center chip business, which has become the focus of Intel's revenue. For its second-quarter revenue forecast, Intel said it still depends on it for growth.

But this is not good news. The server processors used in data centers or so-called cloud computing platforms are generally big customers like Google , Amazon, and Facebook , which will not leave Intel with a large profit. In the past PC market, hundreds of brands around the world revolved around Intel, and the hard-earned money mainly went into the pockets of Intel and Microsoft.

But in the mobile era, the chip giant that discovered Moore's Law, created Silicon Valley, and imprinted " Light, wait for light, wait for light " and the blue Intel Inside in your mind is getting further and further away from us.

The world went mobile, and Intel missed the boat

In 1999 , Intel's market value peaked at $ 500 billion. Today, Intel's market value is less than $ 150 billion. But the world's shift to mobile was already foreshadowed during Intel's golden age.

In 1992 , Apple Computer released the first PDA, the Newton. But it used the ARM 610 RISC chip. However, the device did not achieve commercial success because it did not find its market positioning. Four years later, the first hit PDA, the Nokia 9000 Communicator , also did not use Intel's processors. Instead, it chose its competitor AMD .

It was not until 2002 that Intel cooperated with Microsoft to supply its handheld computers and smartphones. To this end, Intel prepared the XScale series chips based on ARM architecture technology . At the same time, the iPod , a portable player released by Apple in 2001 , set off a boom in the consumer electronics market. It used ARM processors.

In this decade, smartphones have gradually replaced PDAs, and Internet or entertainment devices have become increasingly mobile. But Intel is not without opportunities.

In 2005 , Microsoft smartphones equipped with Windows Mobile 5.0 used this processor. The market share of Windows Mobile increased by 20 % in the second year. However, Intel sold the XScale series to Marvell Technology Group in the same year and continued to focus on developing its own X86 processors.

Later, Microsoft's smartphone market share was less than 3 %, which made Intel say that they had no regrets. What about the iPhone ? According to Paul Otellini , former Intel CEO , they not only sold the XScale series, but also rejected the opportunity to manufacture processors for the first generation iPhone . The reason was that they could not see the future of smartphones.

The world’s shift to mobile accelerated after Apple released the first iPhone in 2007. Intel had missed the boat twice before.

For a long time afterwards, Intel failed to pay attention to the mobile market. Comparing Intel computer processors and mobile processors of the same level, it is not difficult to find that computer processors have always given priority to using new technologies, including netbooks or ultrabooks. For example, in November 2011 , Intel's 32nm process processors were first supplied to computers. Only 2 or 3 months later did mobile phones use processors of the same level.