I know, it's hard to pick one, and this list could get a lot longer.
The Religious fixation on, "x86 everywhere !"
That was what screwed any possibility a meaningful presence in mobile devices; everything else just flowed from that.
Taping a $10 bill on every Atom chip produced, & pretending that made business sense.
Chasing power reduction thru process improvement, rather than admitting that the one design Intel had that worked in mobile was xscale, but it wasn't x86.
The root cause is missing the mobile phone revolution. Everyone’s favorite, most used computer is in your pocket. That used to be the laptop PC. Phones replaced giant swathes of PC functionality (email, photos, etc) and added new compute+mobility features not possible on PCs like Uber, instant photo sharing and so on in a more convenient pocketable form factor.
It expanded the market from 200-300M PC annual units to multiple billions of mobile units. All of those phones demanding ever more compute on leading edge nodes fueling the economy of scale of TSMC.
Intel saw the threat too late and made a bunch of bonehead moves akin to a chicken running around with its head cut off. The truth is that Intel could never embrace mobile early enough due to misaligned incentives (replacing high margin PC silicon with low margin mobile silicon).
"Wokeness" was not only used in hiring in promotions, but used in recent years ( before PG took the helm) in setting company policy. The company made a few major blunders under the leadership of PO, BK, and BS ... and rather than hunker down and do the correct things to right the ship, company leadership (in particular BK, BS, and the staff around them) chose to virtue signal in "Wokeness" as if they thought that would somehow fix the problems. And when employees brought this up in company meetings or blogs, they were often ignored, censored, or attacked by "Woke" employees or leadership.
Manure heads
LTD failed miserably for years. The toxic culture there for years combined with the arrogance of the leadership sealed the failure. The Board is responsible for the choice of leadership and the dramatic decline. Intel did not cultivate the ARM eco system with the dogmatic positions. Leadership on acquisitions squandered the money and resources. The employees who were let go on various criteria such as SET, ACT didn’t look back. But looked backward as a laggard. It is neither a manufacturing powerhouse nor an inventive design innovator. Intel is a Me-too company. Except that others are doing better and more nimbly, efficiently.
Everything in the list has one thing in common—poor quality. Diminishing quality of employees, forever poor quality leadership, low quality decisions (PSO and iPhone) and priorities (from DEI to drones), loss of quality leadership in manufacturing.
This is easy. BK, Murthy, and the Board. They own this nightmare.
"Wokeness in hiring and promotions"
If you're one of those people, life is going to be hard at your next several stops along an unforgiving career path. Let go of blaming others, up your game and adapt to change.
Intel is the new IBM. I worked at Intel. It’s shocking how out dated their systems and basic business practices are. It’s a great place for retirement though.
I'll go with LTD/PTD failures to deliver competitive products on time for over the last decade. All the failed acquisitions and leadership policies could be easily be overlooked if TD could deliver.
This whiner's rehash is far beyond boring.
LTD culture and failure is the fulcrum!
If they had executed Intel would have had technology and product leadership and could have survived Andy, BoD, PSO, BK, BS and Pat strategic, leadership. character flaws and all.
Without technology you have nothing and Intel has nothing now
Tactically, BK is to blame. Strategically, the Board, especially AB, is to blame.
The Board. They picked BK & they set the direction of the company. AB should be at the top of the list.