What I do not see people arguing on this thread is that Intel is a gorilla merely because the authors in the book say it is. The people on this thread--yourself in particular--tend to apply, question, re-apply, examine and re-evaluate the factors the authors laid out to try to determine for themselves whether they think...
This far in the sentence I would agree with you heartily and say that not only is this true, but it is one of the important factors leading to the quality of this thread -- this is not a group of people who are parroting the pronouncements of the guru, but a group which has internalized the concepts and perspective and applies the technique with its own understanding.
The mere fact that the book says Intel is a gorilla does not make it so.
Clearly, as a group, we do not accept or agree with everything in the book; this goes along with the above observation of the character of the group. However, you must admit that Intel having been one of the core case studies leading to the book, tends to give the classification a bit more weight than a casual remark somewhere.
There is a contingent on this thread ... that believe Intel is a gorilla of PC chips.
In all the give and take on this topic, it seems to me that there are two keys focal points. One is the "gorilla of X" question which comes up with many companies. Depending on how one defines X, many companies can, at least initially, seem to have a gorilla-like dominance within that sphere. I say "gorilla-like" because I think that closer examination often reveals that true pongid characteristics are missing and that one merely has a very strong company, a king, perhaps, within the X market sphere. In Intel's case, I think one needs to be clear that those who feel that Intel *is* a gorilla, do not think that they are a gorilla in every market in which they participate. I believe that the one and only market where gorilladom is claimed is microprocessors for the desktop market, possibly for the laptop market. While they have leveraged this base into a strong presence in the server market, they certainly have nothing like the same market share there.
I disagree with the conclusion of this camp because I am not convinced that Intel has proprietary control over the PC chip architecture. That suspicion is based on the breadth of Intel's license to AMD.
This, of course, is the other key focal point. From my own perspective the issue isn't the license, but the control. We all seem to agree about QCOM's gorillaness, but virtually all their revenue comes from or will come from licensing. The question is who controls the architecture. AMD's license is for the 386 architecture. We are now several generations beyond that. Who created those new generations; who was able to control the market to require compatibility with those generations?
Going forward, I agree that Intel faces some interesting challenges. There is the internet with its possible defocusing of the emphasis on the desktop system. And, there is the divergence of technologies represent by Intel's own non-x86 new architectures and AMD's x86 compatible 64 bit approach. But, these issues are essentially substitution threats, changes in the underlying market. For history, the case for gorilladom looks awfully strong. |
