Intel's New CEO Focused on Creating New PCs to Beat Apple

Incoming Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is focused on beating Apple and its new MacBooks, according to a report from The Oregonian.

According to the newspaper, Intel held an all-hands meeting with employees on Thursday, where Gelsinger spoke. “We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing [made by] a lifestyle company in Cupertino,” he reportedly told employees. “We have to be that good, in the future.”

Apple ditched Intel silicon in its latest MacBooks, and tapped a third-party foundry, TSMC, to build ARM-based processors for the laptops. The efforts have so far produced new MacBooks with the best processing power and battery life we’ve seen yet. 

Apple almost certainly dropped Intel’s silicon because its chip technology has struggled to improve. The company’s leading presence in CPUs has eroded on repeated delays progressing toward the 10nm manufacturing process and now the 7nm, which isn’t expected to go online until late 2022 or early 2023. 

The chip struggles have been so bad Intel now faces a crucial decision on whether it’ll outsource the company’s 7nm chip production to TSMC or Samsung to stay competitive. The company was slated to make the decision by this month. But according to The Oregonian, Intel may postpone the decision so that Gelsinger can weigh in. He’ll officially take over for outgoing CEO Bob Swan on Feb. 15. 

Whatever Intel decides will have major consequences for the company’s workforce in Oregon, where it employs 21,000 people. If Intel taps TSMC, a Taiwanese company, it’ll also represent a blow to the US’s once firm chip dominance. 

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As for Gelsinger, he currently leads cloud computing provider VMWare as CEO. But he previously spent over 30 years at Intel, where he was the company’s first chief technology officer. The media narrative shaping up is how Intel has hired an engineer to lead the company after its previous CEO specialized in finance. 

“I will be sharing more in the near-term about my vision and strategy for Intel,” Gelsinger wrote on rejoining Intel, “but I know we can continue to accelerate innovation, strengthen our core business and create value for our shareholders, customers and employees.”