While the full impact of the Intel's 13th and 14th generation woes may be unknown, to describe them thus far as a minor blip would be premature at best. And in my opinion they are already more than that.
Further I'd say that there is a lot of information in your post that is wrong, overly optimistic, or out of date.
1) There have been at least
two problems with 13th and 14th gen processors. The first is the oxidation problem that you allude to as a function of Intel's manufacturing woes and to say "those issues can happen to anyone" is a little facile. They didn't happen to anyone, they happened to Intel. And they happened specifically because of Intel's attempt to rush through as many nodes as possible while still trying to produce their chips leading to bottlenecks during the production process leaving wafers out to oxidize. Intel is not communicating with customers which chips are affected by this and is just saying "some early 13th gen processors" without being specific. When you have competition, losing customer trust, including OEMs who have admitted that Intel has not been forthcoming on this issue even to them, isn't good.
2) The second, unrelated, problem is the design flaw in the microcode that allowed the chips to over-volt when already overheating. This doesn't just affect K and KS SKUs. Those are the most prevalently affected, but every desktop processor over 65W is at risk and has had its warranty extended. It's a fairly substantial portion of their desktop lineup.
3) In addition to servers based on these desktop chips, there have been allegations that some mobile chips may be affected as well.
Intel admits that they have had reports of frequent crashes but claims that those problems are "different". Unclear if different is good however.
4) They are making it quite difficult for customers to make returns and basically said if you get rejected just keep trying. Many of the affected customers are business customers not just individual consumers. These are customers that buy thousands or more CPUs at a time. Again, losing the trust of those customers and having them buy AMD instead is obviously not good.
5) Low volume products are also high margin products as well as halo products. You can ask AMD how competing in graphics against Nvidia felt without such halos for multiple generations over the last decade. Competing in the low margin products doesn't give Intel the needed revenue to fund its fabs, which is actually why they are in such trouble, more on that later in point 8. Intel needs the halos and the high margins to fund itself, especially now.
6) "millions of corporate laptops exactly but less hot and slightly faster than the last generation. That's a much better situation than the competition." That's exactly what their competition is already offering. Intel is late to that party and Meteor Lake underwhelmed.
Intel is in fact saying Lunar Lake will not be enough to turn around the trends in mobile. That'll have to wait for Panther Lake next year.
7)
Intel is being sued by shareholders for lying to them about the extent of financial/engineering problems that Intel was facing and may yet face class action lawsuits over the Intel 13th/14th gen issues. Depending on what happens with these lawsuits, this may be much, much more than a minor blip. Maybe it'll all blow over, but maybe not. But it is not "just social media panic". Investors are pissed and lawyers smell money - normally I'd be all about making fun of the "rational market" behaving erratically, but in this instance, the market has a point. There is actually good reason that Intel is the worst performing tech stock. Intel has major structural problems and has had for a long time. Which brings us to the final point:
8) The potential bursting of the AI market or even overall tech slowdown isn't what's killing the company's profits. Intel isn't being wise here or even really reacting to market conditions. Intel in the AI space is primarily a
hardware company. Far from from retreating, if anything Intel is rhetorically doubling down on selling people on "AI" as the future of the company. Which to be fair makes a certain amount of sense as it's the AI hardware companies that are making the most amount of money right now and while Intel isn't making the revenue it had hoped,
it's the fabs as a division that is losing all the money, not the products. While the products themselves are profitable, they can't offset the vast sums of money Intel is pumping into their fabs to try catch up to and surpass TSMC. As a result of this accelerated process, Intel also don't have the volume for their own chips never mind third party customers. That's why it had to pay TSMC for N3B access for Lunar Lake. So these new Intel fabs can't pay for themselves and won't for a while. They have been vocal about several high profile customers lined up for their foundry but without knowing what those customers will be manufacturing, on what node, in what volumes, one should be somewhat circumspect about gauging Intel-as-a-foundry's potential success. What we do know is that the when for any of these 3rd party foundry products isn't expected to be for another year at least and possibly longer still before Intel foundry products end up in customer hands. It took Intel a long time to dig this hole for themselves, it'll be awhile yet digging itself out. Plus, these cuts are going to be painful and potentially damaging to the company depending on what "wood" Intel chops - they're not
just getting rid of the fresh fruit in the cafeteria.
Now does this mean Intel is doomed? Not necessarily. But the situation is not quite so rosy as portrayed in your posts.
