> "the company's mobile and communications group's second-quarter revenue fell 83 percent to $51 million, and the unit had an operating loss of $1.12 billion"
Revenue fell because they're paying for market share.
"Krzanich set a goal for Intel's chips to be used in 40 million tablets in 2014, up from 10 million the previous year."
They're pretty clear in the article that by "paid off" they're referring to the market share they're buying. Intel is attempting to force its way into the market, leveraging its wildly profitable traditional processor division and $17 billion in cash. With $10.2b in net income the last four quarters, it makes perfect sense to vaporize a few billion dollars if necessary to grab a piece of the mobile market and build forward.
It's not necessarily futile. If Intel can grab enough of a slice of the Android tablet market that developers of Android apps that use significant native code start caring about x86 Android... all sorts of opportunities open up for them.
"Krzanich set a goal for Intel's chips to be used in 40 million tablets in 2014, up from 10 million the previous year."
They're pretty clear in the article that by "paid off" they're referring to the market share they're buying. Intel is attempting to force its way into the market, leveraging its wildly profitable traditional processor division and $17 billion in cash. With $10.2b in net income the last four quarters, it makes perfect sense to vaporize a few billion dollars if necessary to grab a piece of the mobile market and build forward.