Incredible analysis! Color me an ignorant consumer who learned a lot. The future depends not on Jedis, but whether Intel's products are made with an Achilles heel that blows the whole thing up if AMD knows just where to hit it.
Incredible analysis! Color me an ignorant consumer who learned a lot. The future depends not on Jedis, but whether Intel's products are made with an Achilles heel that blows the whole thing up if AMD knows just where to hit it.
Intel had simply become too complacent, and let AMD catch up. Intel is still scrambling, but they will fight back. They are simply too big to fail, they'll retain their market lead, and return earnings an order of magnitude higher than AMD. AMD simply doesn't have the marketing budget to compete with Intel. Put that much money into it, and you can't fail, and Intel won't. That said, I just hope this time the anti-trust commissions keep Intel in check before it's too late, and AMD continues exploiting their agility advantage (being a much smaller company).
The other thing is that if a smaller actor comes along to introduce something new, Intel would have the cash to buy it up. In the US market, I wouldn't bet on antitrust regulation keeping anything in check. There's a Republican president and historically they don't regulate too heavily there, except that this administration has shown they want big deals to go their way politically.
Historically, FTC has been fair in regulating the semiconductor industry. They are very slow, but they eventually get it right. But yeah, under Trump anything is possible. Fortunately, the European Commission is badass, and will never let it happen.