I seem to recall Linley Gwennap or someone at the Microprocessor Report saying that this was because these other industries were too different, in terms of R&D requirements and margins, from Intel’s core business, making PC CPUs; none of these other businesses could ever produce the margins that Intel would need and none of them required the level of R&D that Intel could direct at them. This was when Intel was about to debut Larrabee.

Yes, that is 100% accurate. Their core competency is making wafers. CPUs specifically, high margin servers, low margin latop parts, ... and then chipsets (so many chipsets). Everything else is just a toe in the water. (Their investing arm also does quite well.)

> They enter markets that will take 10 years to mature and then cut their losses when the expected level of profit doesn't appear.

Amazon was far from the first company to do cloud. For instance, Sun Microsystems pushed it in the 90s, and Loudcloud, I mean "Opsware" did it in 2003.

I think the difference was that Amazon committed to it for a loooooong time.

Any counterexamples besides Itanium?

Itanium isn’t a good example because HP heavily subsidized its continuation after a few years. Without that cash, Intel would’ve (justifiably) killed it then.