Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash-landed

[Alby_da_Wolf]

justinian said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

[...]

Long story short: in the very moment the line between PC and other devices will be completely erased, MS and Intel will lose their power on the market, MS will lose also most of the power of its SW legacy, and they will be forced to compete exclusively on price and quality. Still with the big help of the brute force granted them by their size and cash, so they won't disappear and they'll remain two of the biggest players in the market, but they won't be anymore two giants amogst dwarfs.

I see what you are saying. I don't however see Intel losing power. Intel processors run MacOS, Linux, Unix, Windows, ChromeOS.. pretty much any damn thing.

Intel is also a big promoter of linux and open-source. They don't care what the OS is as long as in runs on their chips and they contiunue to profit.

The following extract is taken from their website:

For over two decades, Intel’s contributions to open-source projects—from one end of the solution stack to the other—have helped ensure that a breadth of solutions run exceptionally well on Intel® architecture. Through global collaboration, we’ve helped to build a vibrant ecosystem where everyone can prosper. And there’s plenty more to come.

Intel is positioning itself for whatever future there is too come. Funny thing on their website is that there are two languages to choose from. English or S.Chinese.

Yes, I agree tha Intel has a strong probability to keep on thriving, but like MS it will have to give up the way it was dominating PC world: on PCs Intel was able, thanks to its enormous power, even to do fishy things to stop AMD competition during those 7 years when Athlons regularly outperformed Pentiums and the first Core Duos on desktops, and also in the previous years, when K6s were a little step behind, but beat them for value, and antitrust authorities did little and late against it, with strong pressures not only on PC makers, but even on technical press and retailers (Media Markt/MediaWorld/Saturn,the biggest chain of electronic and household appliance stores in Europe, for example, had an agreement for years with Intel to NOT sell PCs with AMD CPUs, until, far too late, antitrust stopped it).
Now, in the expanded market, Intel can still thrive and grow, it can even grow more than before, but it can't even dream about having the almost undisputed power it has on PCs.
NB Both Intel and MS have all the time they need to adapt, as even blurring that line, smartphone- and tablet-derived devices still mostly lack the computing power necessary to replace x86 desktop and high-end portable PCs, and they could keep on lacking it for a very long time, but as their performances grow anyway roughly at the same rate of high-end PCs, sooner or later the time will come when their performances will be enough for the needs of most users.