Is Intel's Foundry Struggling? 10-Q Filing Highlights Unsuccessful Bid To Add New Customers

Posted today after the release of its quarterly financials on Friday, Intel's latest 10-Q filing paints a sobering picture for its ambitious foundry business. Buried in the report is a telling remark: the company admits that it has been "unsuccessful to date" in attracting "significant" customers to its external foundry services. That's not what you want to hear from a business unit tasked with clawing market share from TSMC and Samsung, especially after years of marketing "IDM 2.0" as the company's comeback strategy.

So why the struggle? One possibility is pricing versus performance. Intel's cutting-edge nodes, like its upcoming 18A process, may be competitive on paper, but if wafer pricing isn't significantly better than comparable TSMC offerings, potential customers might not bite. There's also some chatter that Intel still hasn't made a full-featured PDK (process design kit) broadly available for external partners ...