I wouldn't be surprised if at some point later on (when it's almost impossible to move to a new process node) that Intel starts developing ARM chips again (they did it before with StrongARM and XScale). With the manufacturing advantages that Intel have they could easily become the largest player in that market, giving them an easy to get cash injection.
A family would share one or two X86 CPUs replaced every 3-5years. But very soon I'll probably have at least half a dozen ARM CPUs within a few meters of me wherever I go, all with much shorter replacement cycles.
And, Intel could charge more for them since nobody else can match their process capabilities. It may not be a ton of money, but it's better than having a factory sit idle in a hypothetical future where x86 chips are mostly used in servers and higher end workstations.
Qualcomm is likely to hit a $9.x billion annual profit run-rate in the next four quarters. By comparison Intel's profit for 2013 was $9.6 billion.
If Intel had been smart about it, the moment they saw the iPhone (not to mention Jobs asked Intel to come up with a solution for the iPhone), they would have fired up a new ARM chip and went after the smart phone market. By not doing so, they likely left tens of billions of profit on the table. Shareholders should be furious.
With that logic why should anyone ever seek a remedy to a failure in judgement?
Intel has had excellent ARM chips in the past and has sold them off. They are too married ideologically to X86, just like Microsoft was too infatuated with Win32 as an API. Intel selling ARM is I think to them a signal of defeat in loss rather than a focus on the customers needs. I think AMD is being rather mature in making a server ARM part.
