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Old 05-31-2018, 09:39 AM   #107 (permalink)
Ecky
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Profit or not, they keep the factories running.

If I may make a comparison to the tech industry, Intel chases margins, aiming for (I believe) around 60%. They're generally not willing to decrease margins to increase volume. This was a problem when they attempted to get into the phone space with their mobile Atom CPUs; prices were not competitive with ARM CPUs. As I understand it, Intel offered incentives (contra revenue) to bring their Atoms more in line while still being able to claim high margins, but by the time they got around this they'd missed the boat. They might have been able to bull their way in by undercutting, but they chose instead to keep to their (shrinking) high margin areas.

One problem with Intel's strategy is that while margins look good for investors, it's short-sighted. Overall profit is important, even at the expense of margins, because you have to keep funding R&D, fabs have basically fixed costs, and much research is cross-applicable. After decades of technical superiority, their fabs are falling behind Samsung, TSMC and Global Foundries. The volume of chips put into phones and other small devices allows other fabs to be better funded.

I see cutting small vehicles as pandering to Wall Street.
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