[kbenson]

Perhaps we need to be more aggressive with laws encouraging competition (or more accurately discouraging leaders of a market from getting too large a lead). It really does seem to be better for most involved (except for those that want to capitalize on enough success for short term greed that destroys momentum and talent pools).

What that actually means in a situation like this, where technology and production pipelines are years long and a misstep can set you back a decade or more (like it did for AMD, and like it's doing now for Intel), I don't know. I do know it sure seems like markets with at least three major players are more healthy than those with two, as we keep seeing again and again (iOS and Android being another recent example, if exhibiting a different problem).