A sale isn’t going to happen. Intel has had a rough quarter but their lunar lake launch looks promising, beating Qualcomm’s offerings on battery life and performance.
The issue long term is that Lunar Lake is built on TSMC, so Intel is netting a fraction per chip of what they'd make if they made it themselves.
Intel is currently investing $7B a quarter into getting their foundries competitive again, and it's not clear yet that they'll be able to really do so at scale. And even if they do, it's not clear whether those foundries can effectively serve customers that aren't Intel.
The reason people trust TSMC to make their chips is because TSMC isn't making a competing chip. If I come to an Intel Foundry with my design and work with them to spin up some new capability to get the features to work right, there isn't much of anything that stops Intel Chips from using that new capability to compete with me in a year.
Intel is currently investing $7B a quarter into getting their foundries competitive again, and it's not clear yet that they'll be able to really do so at scale. And even if they do, it's not clear whether those foundries can effectively serve customers that aren't Intel.
The reason people trust TSMC to make their chips is because TSMC isn't making a competing chip. If I come to an Intel Foundry with my design and work with them to spin up some new capability to get the features to work right, there isn't much of anything that stops Intel Chips from using that new capability to compete with me in a year.