Otellini's gut feeling was to go for it, the numbers didn't pencil and he decided not to and then when it went on the market the volumes were two orders of magnitude higher than estimated. Should've went for the reality distortion field... as you said, hindsight.

In 2006, Intel supplied their XScale design to Palm for the Treo 700, to Blackberry for the Pearl and Curve AND to HTC for use in the XDA/MDA Windows Mobile line, in 2006 arguably the much bigger wins as all those were established constantly-growing product-lines already on sale globally.

Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers...

> Apple demanding a (probably much) lower price-point to have the SoC applied in a mysterious unknown project without a volume-commitment could as well have destroyed the business and profit-margin for the entire Xscale business for Intel and its other customers...

One of the key premises of the article is that Apple likely didn't know it was bidding for the iPhone and the decision was taken on that basis.

Why is why saying 'Intel turned down the iPhone' is problematic.