[nikdaheratik]

Thought provoking, but I disagree with pretty much every conclusion. If there is anything they really need they can likely get ARM or Intel to put it in there, so building an ISA from scratch isn't going to gain them much. It's the same reason why they aren't going to become a cell-phone carrier even though that's another part of the vertical stack that they could try to get into: the cost/benefit makes it not worth it.