If you ever doubted the power of competition, take a look at Intel. The company’s recent product announcements underline the power of markets to deliver progress. Telecom should take note.
For more than two decades, the US chipmaker had an effective monopoly on the processors that power desktop PCs, portables and, for the last decade or so, many servers and handhelds.
Intel’s market power meant the company could dictate the rate of technological progress. Rather than develop products for maximum customer benefit and hence sales in a aggressive battle with competitors, Intel could sit back and roll products out on a schedule designed to maximise corporate revenues.
And it did.
Intel made buckets of cash and squandered billions attempting to enter alternative markets. Remember Intel-brand PCs and digital cameras? There were desktop videoconferencing products and plenty of other wacky stuff customers neither cared about nor wanted.
A few competitors snapped at Intel’s heels, but the chip giant wasn’t seriously threatened until AMD got traction two or three years ago.
Now the company has its groove back. It is rolling out dual core and four core processors and addressing the power issues (its early processor designs delivered a lot of heat alongside all those megaflops). It’s got competitive server chips, desktop chips and portable chips.
Of course, few users know what to do with all that processing power - but they love having it.
