To set the stage: I’ve heard the recent news about layoffs with Intel. Before that I read from their new CEO “On training, I think it is too late for us”. Lastly there has been some offhand comments (from LTT) that they’re preparing to sell the company.
Yet while I have no doubt that they are behind; their revenue is about 55 billion since 2023, down from the high of 78-80ish Billion during the pandemic, but about the same as the plateau leading up to the pandemic 2015-2019.
Maybe i’m naive about the way businesses work; but if your still profitable, and you know you need to “catch up” why lay off people and close sites? Maybe that works for a consumer goods company; if your overhead is too high and your not making a profit: slim down.
However for a company where RND is really where the value is, like Intel, it just doesn’t seem to make sense; your not going to get better designs and processes by reducing your experienced staff and letting them go work for the competition. Maybe some restructuring, (in the engineering sense not the euphemism for layoffs).
From videos I watched, the big issue is them losing their market position. They took a big hit when Apple ditched them and made their own chips. Now they’re losing to AMD and Nvidia in the server space. Their newest desktop chips are under-performing. The consumer market is getting more competitive with Qualcomm joining the space and Nvidia/AMD preparing ARM chips. They made a lot of factories for producing chips but it sounds like they’re struggling to lock in a major buyer. Now they’re ejecting tens of thousands of employees in the next few months because they’re hemorrhaging money.
TL;DR they’re getting screwed from every front and either it will take them a long time to recover or they’re going to be left behind.
Sounds about right. I was a die hard fan of Intel for years. I upgraded my PC this year and I picked AMD for the first time in my life. Looking at the scathing reviews and performance tables, it is an insane choice to pick Intel.