Now figuring a Baytrail might average $20, the 40 million "samples" is worth about $800 million. The cost of these parts would be another $400 million for a total loss of $1.2 billion. This approximates the gift that Intel will be giving to tablet manufacturers.
- Russ Fischer@Nov 23 2013

They indicated that Bay Trail is still too costly to reach the mainstream and value price points needed for volume, so they will be investing (covering NRE and contra-revenues (rebates) that will impact gross margins by ~150bps (or ~$800M in investments). Coupled with increased targeted investments, they expect the Other IA revenues to be roughly flat, but with an operating loss even higher than 2013′s staggering $2.5B.
- Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research@Nov 22, 2013

Half of the mobile business is sitting at Samsung, one third of it going to Apple and two thirds of it captive to Samsung products. What is left is about 500 million units at $20 (optimistic) or $10 billion total business. About half of the investor meeting was dedicated to convincing us that Intel will win a significant piece of the mobile business, and I'm sure it will. If Intel attacked it like a junk yard dog, it might come away with about $5 billion.
- Russ Fischer@Nov 23 2013


In the past, Intel has entered new markets (e.g., WiMax) with subsidies that offset less attractive solutions and, once again, that is the plan for the tablet market. Our issue is that the ROI has not been supported by the opportunity. The company is paying ~$800mil to enter the mobile market early via NRE and contra-revenues, which is slated to impact gross margins by ~150bps. This spending will result in only a 3% CAGR in total mobile growth, when including Atom plus notebook. So what value does the $800mil add, and what is the ROI? These are the main questions that were not answered to our satisfaction at the analyst day. We believe the implications of the spend could prove to have a greater impact in the near term vs. long term. In the near term, we believe that $800mil could buy potentially ~20mil in incremental units. This would suggest ~$400mil in incremental revenues, and assuming 50% operating margins, this would imply ~200mil to operating income and represent an ROI of ~20%. In the longer term, the impact of the $800mil spend is less meaningful, as the market typically rewards winners as the market matures […] Our analysis suggests that Intel’s combined notebook (performance processors) and smartphone/tablet (Atom-based) processor revenues should grow from ~$17.6bil in 2013 to ~$19.2bil in 2016, or a CAGR of 3% from 2013 through 2016. While we see the total Atom SoC mobile opportunity growing from $380mil in 2013 to $3.7bil in 2016, or a CAGR of 114% from 2013 through 2016, we expect PC-related revenues to decline from $17.3bil in 2013 to $15.4bil in 2016, or a CAGR of -4%.
- Doug Freedman with RBC Capital@Nov 27, 2013

Even thought this market is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of units annually, how much revenue opportunity is Intel likely to enjoy? On those numbers, maybe a couple of billion dollars worth even if they get it all (which they likely wouldn’t). And even if they could somehow capture that much of the market, it wouldn’t go very far in moving the needle on a $50B+ company.
- Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research

雖然身家夠本，砸大錢所得的市場回報充其量不過數十億鎂，相對於總營收規模500餘億鎂的Intel，意義不大。言下之意，Intel應該退出這個紅海，另謀高就。

In the near term, the volume in mobile will not significantly change the revenue growth story for Intel given that the ASP for both tablet and smartphone processors is significantly lower than PC and servers. However, We believe that for investment sentiment on Intel stock, the success or failure in mobile is very significant.
-Daniel Amir at Lazard Capital Markets@Nov 22, 2013

In terms of units, the smartphone market is nearly 4x the size of the PC market, and more than 100x the size of the server market […] We believe this strategy is worth taking a risk given the fact that the smartphone market is 3 – 4x the size of the PC market, and growing at a 20%+ rate, while the PC market is shrinking.
-CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets’s Srini Pajjuri@November 18, 2013

即便大餅當前，沒有優勢，緣何Intel前仆後繼，執迷於mobile市場？面子問題使然抑或挽救股東信心？還是真有鴻鵠將至，不容錯失？

No one thing moves the needle for a $50 billion company. But when you add up data center, and our software business, the NAND [flash memory chip] business, the Internet of things business, growing 15% to 20% per year, it adds up. We want to have a nicely growing PC market, and maintain position there, and then have these new markets where, if it connects, it does it best with Intel.
- Stacy Smith

即便22nm的Merrifield挾其效能與功耗或能提振戰績，但仍不足以震撼ARM陣營。Intel也有自知之明，直到其LTE modem與Atom的整合方案問世前，都可能只是個智機市場的見習生。藉由合併Infenion，Intel基帶能力已不差，後又併購Fujitsu在美國的射頻芯片部門，增加了LTE-A RF收發器的設計團隊。預計其生聚的戰力將在2015年浮現。

There are currently more participants in the baseband market than there are profitable tier one customers: Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, ST Micro, Broadcom, Marvell, and NVIDIA, among others. Collectively competitors ex-QCOM and MediaTek are spending over $3bn on R&D for less than a $3bn 2014 revenue opportunity in the market for LTE baseband. LTE may ultimately be a catalyst for new entrants but in 2014, the move to LTE likely makes things tougher, not easier, as multimode capabilities continue to be key. Qualcomm and MediaTek are only getting stronger, especially in serving high end phones from Apple and Samsung, which is where the revenue and profit opportunities lie. By year end 2014, we’d expect to see significant reductions in R&D from at least some of the participants.
- Joseph Moore, semiconductor analyst with Morgan Stanley

不過大摩沒那麼樂觀，在高通跟發哥手底下，就算是Intel也沒啥機會的。

There will be just two suppliers at the end of the day in mobile. You can decide.

史密斯先生看法不同，更語出驚人：最後只會有兩家在行動晶片市場存活。哪兩家？不告訴你。

總的來看，2013跟2014年，不期望Intel對ARM陣營造成顯著的衝擊；而ARM架構跟Foundry技術也將在兩年內遭逢效益瓶頸，屆時，或是Intel最後一擊的tipping point，再錯過，可不只難過了。

Intel looks forward to providing its services to many companies that “want to use the Intel architecture.” There will be a number of partners and customers who will say “we want to use these leading-edge transistors in segments of our business.”

關於未來Intel的foundry事業，Stacy的回答與市場認知再度扞格，讓人迷糊了。意指一堆人想用X86架構讓Intel代工。


Wearable devices as well as 'Internet of Things' (IoT) devices are the next growth drivers for hardware vendors that can offer the required energy saving technologies and energy harvesting technologies to realise these applications.
- Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner

在高度擁擠的智機紅海之外，穿戴式裝置與物聯網似乎獨立其外，儼然下一個藍海。


Morgan Stanley table of Internet of Things suppliers

以Intel領頭羊的製程功力，在NTV跟STV這方面另闢戰場，轉換起跑點，更有看頭。