Intel's $100 billion mistake

In 2001, Steve Jobs called Intel with an offer that would basically change the entire future of computing, and Intel said no. They had looked at the margins and decided that getting into mobile wasn't going to be a profitable enough business for them. That decision cost them over $100 billion in one day alone. Here's how it went down. It's 2007. Intel is the undisputed king of the technology industry, especially in PC and computer chips. They have 90% market share. Nearly a $500 billion market cap at one point. Steve is calling because Apple needs chips for a new device they're launching called the iPhone. At that time, nobody knew what was going to happen with the iPhone, and Intel CEO Paul Otellini, he and his team run the numbers. They don't think they're going to sell many chips if they partner with Apple, and they're certainly not going to be profitable enough. Otellini's gut tells him he should say yes, but this time he looked at the numbers and followed the spreadsheet. They said no. It turns out his forecast wasn't just wrong, Apple's forecast was wrong too. More than anybody had imagined, the iPhone was going to become a hugely profitable and famous product. Their estimates were 100 times wrong what actually turned out in practice. Apple went with a type of chip called the ARM, and so did Samsung, and so did everybody else. It was a great chip because it was simple, easier to program to, and didn't take up a lot of battery power. Today, 1.4 billion smartphones ship every year, each one with an ARM chip inside of it. On the other end of the spectrum, Intel's still stuck in the PC market only, and those ship about 250 million a year. They missed the boat. But here's the thing, this isn't what killed Intel, and it certainly wasn't the biggest mistake they made over the decades of their history. The true answer is not even close to that, and much worse. I did a long video explaining the entire thing. You can see that link in the first comment below.