Thats such a rear view mirror take. I am not in this industry but it was obvious Intel had a manufacturing advantage back then and this let them be the dominant player in this space for decades. High margins and they were the only game in town for the x86 in most key markets (AMD was just a cover for antitrust cases).

Even 10 years ago Intel was a blue chip stock, saying they should have cannibalized their lead to go into a lower margin market for volume would have gotten you kicked off any executive role.

Imagine being in a boardroom in 2010:

  - You're printing money with 60%+ gross margins
  - You have a 2-3 year process lead over everyone
  - Your R&D budget dwarfs competitors because of your integrated model
  - PC sales are still growing and servers are booming with cloud build-outs
  - Also you are betting that Apple is going all in on your foundry to drive the volume and R&D