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Comment by patrickg_zill | Hacker News Reader

A precedent to quote would be Kodak, which for 100 years was very dominant in film/imaging.

At one time, they were even the largest maker of lenses in the world, also. So influential that even today, Rochester has smaller optics companies that are world class.

Kodak was not stupid - they designed the very first DSLR sensors and still make high quality monochrome and color sensors today.

They knew that there would a film/digital transition, even tried to plan for it.

However despite all that, the inertia of their business pretty much killed them (along with some dumb ideas, poor middle management).

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The example of Kodak or any other, once upon a time, successful company can be applied to anyone: from Intel to Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. We can't predict the future but Intel has a competitive advantage in the technology and investment capabilities of more integrated chips while Kodak was completely disrupted by new innovations. Intel has a lot of room to experiment if they are really challenged. I am not bullish on Intel but they remain to have unique offerings.

Kodak KNEW the digital chips were coming. They even designed the first of them.

Same as Intel knows that low-power chips are eating up the bottom, that ARM is strong in this space, etc. But so far Intel hasn't had a good response (same as Kodak) to the new challenger.

Scaling down is hard. Look at OpenPower. They are feeling the heat from Xeons and know they need to scale and price down, and yet the scale-out Power9 SKU won't be out for what, another year? And how long until actual OCP gear ships, which probably will still cost like a decent Hyundai sedan?

Intel had nothing to offer to compete with ARM in mobile space. Largely ignored ARMv8 servers when they were mostly specialized or micro. Now E5-competitive chips are entering the market from multiple competitors, and even mobile SoCs have grown up into laptop chips...

Counterexample: Android is the top operating system surpassing Microsoft Windows. Microsoft doesn't even have a mobile phone running their operating system but they are thriving.

Of course there's the counterexample that shows that with the right management you can turn your company around - Fujifilm http://www.economist.com/node/21542796

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