The company's new CEO must find a way to gain relevance in the smartphone world after his predecessor's mistake
In last May's The Atlantic magazine, Intel's then-CEO Paul Otellini confessed to a mistake of historic proportions. Apple had given Intel the chance to be part of the smartphone era, to supply the processor for the first iPhone … and Otellini said no [emphasis and light editing mine]:
That Otellini found the inner calm to publicly admit his mistake – in an article that would be published on his last day as CEO, no less – is a testament to his character. More important, Otellini's admission unburdened his successor, Brian Krzanich, freeing him to steer the company in a new direction.
And Krzanich is doing just that.
First: House cleaning. Back in March 2012, the Wall Street Journal heralded Intel as The New Cable Guy. The idea was to combine an Intel-powered box with content in order to serve up a quality experience not found elsewhere (read Apple, Netflix, Roku, Microsoft …). To head the project, which was eventually dubbed OnCue, Intel hired Erik Huggers, a senior industry executive and former head of BBC Online.
At the All Things D conference in February, Huggers announced that the TV service would be available later this year. The Intel TV chief revealed no details about how the service OnCue would differ from existing competitors, or how much the thing would cost … but he assured us that the content would be impressive. ("We are working with the entire industry"), and the device's capabilities would be comprehensive: ("This is not a cherry-pick … this is literally everything").
Intel seemed to be serious. We found out that more than 1,000 Intel employees in Oregon had been engaged in testing the product/service.
Then Krzanich stepped in, and applied a dose of reality:
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| Intel’s new chief executive, Brian Krzanich, last week cancelled the company?s OnCue TV-service project. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images |
In last May's The Atlantic magazine, Intel's then-CEO Paul Otellini confessed to a mistake of historic proportions. Apple had given Intel the chance to be part of the smartphone era, to supply the processor for the first iPhone … and Otellini said no [emphasis and light editing mine]:
"The
thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was
introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do …. At the end of the
day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to
pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below
our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things
you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.
"...while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut. [...] My gut told me to say yes."That Otellini found the inner calm to publicly admit his mistake – in an article that would be published on his last day as CEO, no less – is a testament to his character. More important, Otellini's admission unburdened his successor, Brian Krzanich, freeing him to steer the company in a new direction.
And Krzanich is doing just that.
First: House cleaning. Back in March 2012, the Wall Street Journal heralded Intel as The New Cable Guy. The idea was to combine an Intel-powered box with content in order to serve up a quality experience not found elsewhere (read Apple, Netflix, Roku, Microsoft …). To head the project, which was eventually dubbed OnCue, Intel hired Erik Huggers, a senior industry executive and former head of BBC Online.
At the All Things D conference in February, Huggers announced that the TV service would be available later this year. The Intel TV chief revealed no details about how the service OnCue would differ from existing competitors, or how much the thing would cost … but he assured us that the content would be impressive. ("We are working with the entire industry"), and the device's capabilities would be comprehensive: ("This is not a cherry-pick … this is literally everything").
Intel seemed to be serious. We found out that more than 1,000 Intel employees in Oregon had been engaged in testing the product/service.
Then Krzanich stepped in, and applied a dose of reality:
Intel continues to look at the business model … we are not experts in the content industry and we're being careful." [AllThingsD: New Intel CEO Says Intel TV Sounds Great in Theory. But …]
Indeed, to those of
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