Hillary Clinton is making an impact on the semiconductor industry. Her ‘No Quitting’ stance has spread to Intel CEO Paul Otellini who, almost unbelievably, says Intel is still trying to get into the cellphone business.
In the latter years of the last decade, Intel spent over $10 billion on acquisitions aimed at getting it into the cellphone market. It all went down the pan with an ignominious $600 million exit in the sale of the business to Marvell.
Now here’s Otellini telling the Wall Street Journal: “All the major handset manufacturers . . . are all talking to us.”
The motivation for not quitting is, says Otellini, that Intel has now realised that phones are “becoming just small Internet computers that happen to do voice”.
Well done Paul. Now you’ve caught up with everyone else, how are you going to get the handset manufacturers to transition from ‘talk’ to ‘walk’?
After all, let me remind you, Intel failed in wireless chips last time out because:
First, It didn’t make its wireless chips on Intel’s most advanced processes, so condemning them to be uncompetitive.
Second, handset manufacturers didn’t want Intel to do to them what Intel had done to the PC industry.
Third, you only get one chance to screw the industry.
However, Otellini has learned something from his past experiences in wireless.
Asked if his new sally into wireless would involve acquisitions, he tells the WSJ: “There are very few large technology acquisitions that have been successful”.
So he’s learning. And he’s not a quitter. But is that enough?
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