Who would have thought, a few years ago, that Nvidia would have more revenues in a quarter than Intel has in a year ? Or that Nvidia would have a market cap of $4 trillion compared to Intel’s $100 billion? Or that SiC, the NBT until recentlywould see one supplier going bankrupt this year and another pulling out?
The industry turns on tenuous factors – the shifts from bipolar to MOS to NMOS to CMOS, RCA’s transfer of CMOS to Taiwan, IBM’s choice of the 8088 for its PC, Nokia’s choice of Arm IP for its phones, the rise of the fabless, the emergence of foundry, the gamble of bringing up a new process.
Those who get caught on the wrong side of a trend do not fare well.
So it’s surprising that so many people claim to know the formula for success in an industry where you survive on being able to constantly make new products but can’t be sure what new products the market will be buying.
Increasingly governments want to get involved – they think all it takes is money; then there’s the management people – they think it’s all about structure; the engineers think it’s all about good engineering.
The answer is, of course, that it’s all three and the trick is getting the blend right and being a good guesser.
