[netshade]

I say this as someone who bought some INTC a while back expecting something like the following to play out.

Last year's (and somewhat, continuing) chip shortage will combine with a view in the US that chip-availability is a national security issue. At some point, the US will make a strong case for in-nation chip fabrication as a national push, whether that be favorable business conditions for companies like Intel, or negative business conditions for foreign chip providers. Intel already sees this, and is playing to that future game; maybe not necessarily win Apple back ( as they say ), but to play to a future environment where many companies that aren't 3T mega corps to not have very many attractive domestic options other than Intel.

Certainly I'm just playing a guessing game here, but that may be a potential future market they pitch to someone. "Apple will continue to play their own game, but here's a whole other market we see in the future".

[bcrl]

In order to regain Apple as a customer, Intel would actually need to commit to becoming a foundry. The catch is that Intel has tried to become a foundry several times before and failed, and there's no reason to believe this time will be any different. Intel survives off of fat cat margins on silicon by selling premium systems (especially in the server market), and the foundry business model is simply unable to provide those kinds of margins. What would impress me is if Intel starts poaching the key people from foundries that are needed to sell and support the business model internally.