This is an objectively bad article. I'm still trying to figure out exactly which November the author is talking about. But I do think there is an interesting story in there if it was written by a better journalist with some/any actual insider information.

Agreed.

I'm still trying to figure out which Qualcomm product the author is talking about. Does it exist? Was it bad? Did people buy it? If not, why?

I don't believe the author's justification as to why Qualcomm was in the best position to make a success of an ARM server chip - there's a quote from a Gartner analyst and the assertion that you need a product road-map. What? Is that it? Surely the important thing is to make a good chip, make it cheap and produce enough to meet demand. Do that consistently for two years and the big cloud vendors will start buying. I don't think you need to be Qualcomm to achieve that.

Why couldn't a startup company break into this market? For example, this one https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ampere-e...

Maybe this:

“the Qualcomm Centriq 2400 features up to 48 Qualcomm Falkor cores—our custom Armv8-based CPU core”

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/server-processors

Agreed. AMD is the real threat. Lisa Su has done everything right in turning around AMD. AMD was on the verge of bankruptcy. Lisa Su took it over and now AMD is come back to life.

You could also say it was this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)

And now he is at Intel.

Intel doesn’t have an architecture problem. They have a manufacturing one. As good as Jim Keller may be it’s just not his domain.

And, I expect Intel also has a cost-base problem. They have 106,000 employees, compared to AMD's 8,900.

False comparison. Intel is doing a lot more than AMD, those employees are across many different products and business units.

Doing more things isn't necessarily a good thing, doing the right things is.

AMD has a ruthless focus on a couple of markets, a competitive product and clear leadship.

That makes them a threat whatever the headcount.

If EPYC starts gaining ground in the high margin/high volume server market then Intel has to double down and they might, the Core architecture was a response to the AMD64 and a good one.

They aren't out the fight but they are taking a few hits at the moment .

Apple with Cook as CEO is a great examlpe of how much impact a efficient supply chain can have.

Efficient supply chain saved Apple when Steve Jobs was still around.

Now it's their vertical integration and just how good they are up and down the stack compared to the competition.

There is not a lot of vertical integration in Apple's physical supply chain. Screens are sourced from Samsung (or have been last time I checked), phones are assbled by Foxxcon (same as above, might have changed).

Managing all that is what set's Apple appart from others. Besides brand, design and such. I'm in no position to judge the software part.

The article does have an incredibly narrow focus. It's as if the author doesn't know AMD exists, when in fact AMD is a far far larger threat to Intel due to its chips native support of the x86 instruction set.

It’s Bloomberg, so it’s possibly not beggering belief that this is little more than a PR piece for Intel. I’m not saying it’s paid for or anything, but PR agencies are always there with the outline of a story for reporters too lazy to bother with actual journalism. While this piece isn’t recurring like a submarine, it still has thst general stink.

I can’t think of a plausible reason beyond that, to ignore the role or AMD and Intel’s recent struggles.