However, that situation has changed dramatically, and continues to change. We have a pretty good idea of what a smart phone and a tablet should look and feel like now. And there's real profit to be made. So it's becoming a stable market, just like the PC market, where the technical requirements are well understood. So Intel can soon dominate these markets with just a handful of products. They don't have to specifically design things for Apple. Everyone needs largely the same things.
That doesn't mean just the plastic around the processor but the processor and SoC itself. If you're buying Intel, you're buying only Intel. That's it. You can't take an Intel x86 core and slap it in your own SoC. You can't make an Intel processor elsewhere but only at Intel's fabs. If Intel makes an SoC, that's what you're getting. If you want something else, tough luck.
That's a
huge negative.
- If Apple needs a bigger beefier GPU to drive its massive amount of pixels, is there any conceivable way to put in a bigger GPU into an Intel SoC if Intel doesn't make it? No. You'd have to look elsewhere.
- If Amazon wants a smaller SoC without as much processing power as a movie-and-reading tablet, would they go and buy the big and powerful x86 SoC? No, they'd go elsewhere (or in their case just buy TI's OMAP division and make their own).
- If a company needs very good LTE service for a smartphone, where do they go? Intel doesn't offer it. What if Qualcomm offers a better deal for their SoC with the LTE included than they would for offering the licensing for it?
The problem is that making your own cores is very expensive compared to picking an off-the-shelf product. And the potential benefit from doing it is rapidly diminishing. Furthermore, soon Intel will offer a crushing advantage in performance/Watt. This will leave them no choice but to buy into x86.
We've also been hearing this from Intel for a few years now and they have yet to deliver. You're assuming it's already a done deal. And that's quite an assumption.
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