bad product is a symptoms of a even deeper cause... Lack of competition. The decline of intel started long ago. The financial results here are just very very lagging indicator of that. The lack of competition combined with very agressive anti competitive practice allow them to survive on pretty bad product line.
In a healthy market, competition would have force intel to improve well before the point we are now
They are only moving because AMD is finally providing that competition, but it's not fair to say that "if only AMD had gotten their act together sooner, intel would be a better comapny."
Ultimately, intel chose to let intel rot while AMD was out of the picture. (ignoring that intel's backroom deals with Dell and co. are a big part of what pushed AMD out)
AMD and ARM-based solutions too. I can't picture wanting to run Windows on ARM for a few product generations but for server use I'd have no problem w/ Linux on ARM.
