What happened to Intel?

Delays to next gen chips and maybe outsourcing manufacturing...

Quote Motley Fool...

"....announcement that its 7-nanometer chips will be delayed and fall 12 months behind schedule caused a virtual panic among the company's investors....

Intel had already fallen behind competitors in its transition to 10-nanometer chips, going from a leader in the industry to a laggard behind Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), which uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) for its manufacturing process. Now with a further delay in its next node transition, investors are fearing Intel's current industry-leading market share and profitability could take a hit in the years ahead.

On the conference call with analysts, CEO Bob Swan said Intel may begin to use an outside foundry such as TSMC for some of its manufacturing: "We will continue to invest in our future process technology road map, but we will be pragmatic and objective in deploying the process technology that delivers the most predictability and performance for our customers, whether that be on our process, external foundry process, or a combination of both."

End quote

Intel decided to go full retard and get complacent at the exact same time that AMD decided to step their game up.