Intel vs AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm: What Happened?

I stopped working for Forrester in 2002 and went out on my own as an independent analyst. At the time, Intel’s valuation and capabilities significantly eclipsed AMD and Nvidia. Intel had a strong corporate brand, and Pentium was so popular Wrote songs about itAnd Qualcomm wasn’t even on Intel’s radar.

Twenty-two years later, Intel is bruised and bleeding. AMD is hosting an event at the Moscone Center, where Intel used to host its massive IDF events. Nvidia is the group’s highest-valued company, and Qualcomm recently reportedly explored a move to buy Intel.

What happened? Intel took its eye off the ball and repeated many of the mistakes IBM had made in the 1980s.

Let’s examine how Intel’s trajectory has changed over the past two decades, identifying key mistakes and missed opportunities that allowed it to overtake AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. We’ll close with my product of the week, a new Lenovo laptop that uses Intel’s new Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 processor.

Intel from IBM

When I worked at IBM, I wrote a report because I was very disappointed that the company, which was hugely dominant when I joined, had lost that dominance.

At IBM, I worked in finance, internal audit and marketing. I was one of the people who tried to point out that IBM was losing its dominance, only for the VP to whom I reported to say “IBM sells the equivalent of air. Customers have no choice but to buy from us.” Apparently, this turned out to be untrue, as customers eventually fled the company in large numbers, nearly putting IBM out of business.

In a panic, IBM’s board of directors fired then-CEO John Akers and replaced him with Louis Gerstner, a marketing expert who knew nothing about technology but correctly realized that IBM first needed to fix its image and restore sales. , or the company will fail. .

It was similar to what happened at Apple in the late 90s with Steve Jobs. Apple’s products weren’t competitive, but the base was still loyal, so Jobs initially moved to fix Apple’s image of having bad products, and then fixed those products. Still, he would never have been able to do the latter if he hadn’t first fixed Apple’s image and reversed its declining sales.

IBM’s recovery under Gerstner has been almost magical, with CFO Jeremy York, who played a role in Apple’s turnaround, doing much of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Gerstner built a marketing company that arguably surpassed even his previous company, Nabisco.

However, recovery slowed when York left IBM and Sam Palmisano decided that marketing was not as important, disbanding Gerstner’s marketing efforts. If Palmisano hadn’t done this, I believe IBM would be much bigger and stronger today.

In the 1990s, Intel was a marketing powerhouse under the marketing leadership of Dennis Carter and the brilliant leadership of Andy Grove. Intel reached such a level of dominance in its segment that, although not as great as IBM, it was still far ahead of its competitors.

However, once Dennis Carter and Andy Grove retired, Intel began to take its huge lead for granted. Marketing execution and funding declined dramatically, and Intel began burning through successive CEOs, each with a different vision. Most of the damage was done by Brian Krzanich, who effectively put the company’s primary product on life support as he tried to chase down Qualcomm’s smartphone market.

Intel began to fall behind AMD, which was focused and had more consistent leadership, especially under IBM-trained Lisa Sue in the last decade. Meanwhile, Qualcomm, buoyed by its smartphone success, aimed to enter the PC market, and Nvidia quietly bet on AI, which seemed more like a 2040 event than a near-term technology. Losing Justin Ratner, Intel’s near-legendary CTO, was also problematic and likely helped keep Intel’s leadership in the dark about AI’s potential.

Pushed by Apple, Intel failed dramatically in its attempt to unseat Qualcomm, which made it look weak and made the world aware that Intel’s performance was not where it should be, and that marketing was a shadow of what it once was. It was no longer strategic, so much a cost center that seemed to lack any institutional value.

Thus, Intel had no defense against brand erosion or market leadership presence.

AI hits

Last year marked 20 years of the rise of AI. Only Nvidia and IBM invested significantly in this technology, although even IBM didn’t think it would hit so soon, with each subsequent CEO underfunding the effort against its potential.

Nvidia equipped OpenAI with its technology, and in a move similar to what ChatGPT did with Spyglass — Microsoft’s first successful attempt to outsource Netscape Navigator — adopted ChatGPT under the Copilot brand.

Nvidia rode the wave because it helped create it, and AMD, already accustomed to fast-following Intel, came up quickly from behind. Companies like Microsoft and Google now consider AMD’s AI solutions on par with Nvidia’s offerings. Given that Nvidia’s offerings are so popular that it can’t keep up with demand, AMD is seeing a substantial boost in its visibility and revenue.

At the same time, Qualcomm, working with Microsoft, developed an AI platform for PCs that offers performance and huge battery life benefits. Again, AMD quickly pivoted and brought to market a Qualcomm-competitive effort that performed well against Qualcomm’s offerings — in part because it didn’t require an emulator for x86.

Intel simply didn’t see AI coming (to be fair, no one did), but when Microsoft wanted an NPU, Intel pushed back instead of moving forward. It’s been two years since it did an incredible job of bringing its Lunar Lake technology, but it’s a premium part, and Intel won’t have a performant NPU in the mainstream for at least another year.

Now, desktop implementation of AI is still very limited and not widely used. No workstation, desktop PC, or gaming PC (laptop or desktop) has an NPU yet. In this scenario Intel should be given the time it needs, but Intel’s lack of marketing doesn’t allow it to properly pitch what it has, so it’s bleeding market share.

While Intel still leads the market share, it appears to be where AMD was seemingly overnight and is chasing AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm instead of emerging as the market share leader.

If Intel still had a marketing team funded and supported under Dennis Carter, it could do what IBM did under Louis Gerstner and Apple did under Steve Jobs, eroding the market until a workable solution was found. As good as Lunar Lake is, it isn’t broad enough to carry this load alone, and without strong marketing, it will likely undercut its prospects.

Wrap Up: The Problem of Under-Resourcing Marketing

A conversation I had at IBM has haunted me for decades because it is repeated so often. Tech companies don’t listen to customers. I get it. As Steve Jobs once said, customers often don’t know what they want. But that means companies have to do what Jobs did and measure what they offer against needs customers don’t yet realize they have. This ability to manipulate demand is the scope of marketing.

Taking the iPhone as an example, it was based on the LG Prada phone which failed largely because people simply didn’t like the virtual keyboard. They prefer existing physical keyboards from Microsoft, Palm and Research in Motion (BlackBerry).

With little resistance, Apple convinced the market that its virtual keyboard design was superior with an emphasis on entertainment features. Instead of defending their position, top competitors followed Apple’s lead, effectively ending the keyboard smartphone era.

D Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition An impressive laptop that uses the new Lunar Lake Intel Core Ultra 7 processor.

It’s a premium notebook with a reasonable entry price of under $1,300. Fully loaded, it’s under $1,500, but I found the entry configuration good enough for me, making it a value. It has a huge touchpad, a nice keyboard (as you’d expect from Lenovo), and a premium feel.

Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition Laptop (Image credit: Lenovo)

I thought Lunar Lake laptops would hit the $2,000-plus price range, so this stands out as an interesting bargain (I love bargains).

The Aura Edition branding means it comes with premium support capabilities and will pair better with your Google or Apple smartphone. There are some additional features that I haven’t had a chance to try yet. One is that it can range from 30 to 120 Hz refresh rate based on need, which not only delivers gaming-like frame rates when you need them but saves power when you don’t.

Go back to the keyboard. I’m writing on this laptop right now, and it’s surprisingly quiet and comfortable. It has the feel of a mechanical keyboard but doesn’t have that annoying clicking sound as often. It’s not a gaming laptop – it has Intel Arc graphics – but I love this keyboard and will be sad to see this laptop go back to Lenovo in a week.

The display is a very nice 15-inch 2.8K, one of the best non-OLED displays I’ve ever seen. OLED is better, but it pulls a ton of power, making this display a decent tradeoff.

Port-outs are decent, with Thunderbolt and USB-C ports and a legacy USB-A port. Next to the power switch, there is a “Camera Off” switch (the camera supports Windows Hello and is nice but nothing special).

The laptop’s sound is impressive, and it supports Dolby Atmos. I think this is the best sounding laptop I’ve tested this year. Oh, and it has a headphone jack, which means if you forget your expensive wireless headphones on a trip, you can buy cheap, wired earbuds and still watch your movie. (By the way, did you know that you can no longer download Netflix movies on a PC?)

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition laptop is an impressive product that showcases the hard work that both Lenovo and Intel put into making it, making it my Product of the Week.