Intel's CEO change is in many ways a success story for the silicon company Apple

It's been a tough season for Intel, and now its CEO Pat Gelsinger is gone. And in the midst of the chipmaker's transition, Apple's silicon looks like a bigger win than ever for Apple.

Intel ousts CEO after years of struggles

Intel's official statement indicates Gelsinger is technically retiring. But the company's earnings and turbulent few years make it clear it was a squeeze.

Ian King, Liana Baker and Ryan Gould write in Bloomberg:

Intel Corp. CEO Pat Gelsinger was forced to resign after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn around the iconic chipmaker, deepening turmoil at one of the tech industry's pioneers.

The conflict came to a head last week, when Gelsinger met with the board to discuss the company’s progress in regaining market share and narrowing the gap with Nvidia Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. Given the option to resign or be ousted, he chose to call it quits at Intel.

As the article notes, Gelsinger’s downfall was primarily a byproduct of Nvidia’s rise in artificial intelligence.

While Intel’s decline largely coincides with Apple’s 2020 switch to Apple-made chips for Macs, the two events are largely coincidental.

However, while Apple can’t really take much responsibility for its former partner’s demise, the story is nonetheless a big win for Apple’s chips.

Why? Because Apple's chip not only revitalized the Mac in a way Intel never could, it also protected Apple from the damage done by Intel's difficult period.

The Alternate Timeline Without Apple's Chip

Experts may argue that Apple is falling behind in AI, but just think where the company would be if Apple's transition to a new chip had not happened.

Apple's silicon is the foundation for Apple Intelligence, not to mention many of the other advances and features in the Mac over the past few years.

If the transition to a new chip had not happened, the Mac would have languished, and Apple's own AI strategy would have been in serious jeopardy.

All of these difficulties would have led Apple to today, where the partner it could rely on for Mac chips, Intel, forced its CEO to resign and ushered in what is sure to be a difficult leadership transition.

Best comment from Adam

Liked by 11 people

If Apple hadn't moved to a new processor, it would already be in the process of a major recall or RMA for every Mac with 13th- and 14th-generation Intel processors. That would have undermined trust in Apple products even more than the NVIDIA recall a few years ago, which ultimately led Apple to abandon NVIDIA. (though in the case of nvdiias they learned from it and haven't had a single failure since, and it's a shame that Apple missed out on a lot of nvidia GPUs in the last era of Intel. But it does show that Apple is VERY quick to kick someone out if they don't deliver, and that strategy saved their skin with Intel.

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I guess my point is that Apple's silicon may not have contributed much to Intel's downfall, but it sure saved Apple from a lot of trouble.

Thanksgiving is officially over, but Apple's management is certainly very grateful for their fantastic silicon team today.

Where do you think Apple would be if it still relied on Intel for chips? Let us know in the comments.