Chapter 29 Section 2 Intel Motorola Battle

After all, capital-intensive Japanese semiconductor companies cannot compete with technology-intensive Intel.The only heavyweight Intel has encountered so far is Motorola in the 1980s.Just as the rise of the Roman Empire was achieved by defeating the original overlord Carthage in the Punic Wars, Intel's rise was achieved by defeating the old semiconductor company Motorola.Motorola was founded in 1928. As early as World War II, it was a supplier of wireless communications for the US military.Since the 1960s, it has led the world in communications and integrated circuits.Motorola launched the 16-bit microprocessor 68000 two years earlier than Intel, which is five times better than the 8086 in decimal arithmetic performance. The name 68000 is obtained from the number of 68,000 transistors it integrates.The 8086 has less than 30,000 transistors.At that time, many workstations, including Hewlett-Packard, Sun, and the defunct Apollo, all used Motorola processors.In the same year (1982) when Intel came up with the 80286, Motorola launched the 68010, which was significantly better in performance than the 80286, and continued to be the processor of the main workstation at that time.It is said that Intel played a trick on the model in order to compete with Motorola. Intel's second-generation processor should have been named 80186, but Intel left this number for an unimportant input and output processing chip, and its series The number of the processor jumps to 80286 at once, and people who don't understand technology think that Intel's processor is a generation higher than Motorola's.In the contest of 32-bit microprocessors, Motorola completely gained the upper hand in terms of technology and launch time. Its next 68020 was significantly better than Intel's 80386. In addition to being used in major workstations, the 68020 was also adopted by Apple. Processor chosen as Macintosh.

At this time, Intel received strong support from the outside.Due to the gradual popularization of IBM PC compatible machines, Intel, which is relatively backward in technology, has occupied more market share.Although Motorola later released the 68030 corresponding to Intel's 80486, at this time, various workstation companies began to develop their own RISC processors, and it was difficult for Motorola to compete with Intel with only one user left, Apple.A few years later, Motorola simply joined the ranks of RISC and started PowerPC. Ten years later, as Apple also began to use Intel processors, Motorola completely launched the microprocessor processor market.

Motorola did not lose in terms of technology and capital. Before the 1980s, Motorola was significantly stronger than Intel in terms of capital and technology.For a long time, its processors outperformed Intel's counterparts in terms of performance.Motorola's defeat, first of all, was caused by the external factors of Microsoft, that is, Intel has an ally that has not signed a contract with Microsoft.However, Motorola itself has made many mistakes in business, management and marketing.If Motorola had run its business properly, it should be able to hold onto the workstation and Apple markets today with RISC processors.

To analyze Motorola's defeat, we might as well compare the two companies Intel and Motorola.First of all, these are two companies from different eras.Although Motorola, which is headquartered in Illinois in the central part of the United States, is also a high-tech company and has experienced the information revolution in the 1980s, its attitude is still a traditional company in the 1950s and 1960s.Although Motorola treats its employees well in terms of wages and benefits, the company and its employees basically have a traditional employment relationship. The company has many internal management levels, and most employees basically don't have many stock options.Therefore, the performance of the company has little to do with the interests of employees.Intel Corporation is a typical Silicon Valley company.The work intensity of each employee is much greater than that of Motorola, but the average stock option per employee is also much more.Many of the houses in several better school districts in Silicon Valley were bought by early employees of Intel Corporation, and these houses could not be bought by wages in a lifetime.A few years ago, the American History Channel commented on the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1899-1995 in a program.American historians believe that this is a war between armies of two different eras. Although the weapons of the two sides are similar, the outcome of the war will not have any suspense, because it is difficult for an army in the late agricultural era to win a rising armies of industrialized countries.The same goes for the competition between Intel and Motorola.

Second, the leadership levels of the two companies are far from each other.Although Grove, the CEO of Intel Corporation in the 1980s and 1990s, was a scholar, he was also the best leader and manager in the microcomputer era. He was rated as the best CEO in the world several times.Motorola was founded by the Galvin brothers. The company was passed on to his son in the 1960s, and to his grandson in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a typical family company.As the saying goes, wealth can't last for three generations, and this saying really came true in the Calvin family. Three generations can be said to be inferior to one generation.Although the grandson of Christopher Calvin was "chosen" as CEO, if his surname was not Calvin, he would never be the CEO of Motorola, or even enter the upper echelons of the industry.

In terms of business, semiconductors are only a division of Motorola, and microprocessors are only a business of its semiconductor division, but it is everything to Intel.Therefore, even if Motorola completely withdraws from the microcomputer processor market, it will only lose some territory, and once Intel fails, it will face a catastrophe.Generally speaking, Wall Street always hopes that a listed company has as many sources of income as possible instead of a single source of income. Motorola has indeed done this. Many fields such as mobile phones and TV receivers have developed.As a result, it is difficult to expand in every field.Intel Corporation is very focused on doing things. Until today, it has been concentrating on the processors of personal microcomputers.The research and development of each generation of products requires a lot of manpower and funds, and every time it can only succeed but not fail.It's like a loose thread and a strand of rope, a loose thread is easily torn by a strand of rope.Therefore, the dedicated Intel finally made the computer processor business very large and very good, and the diversified Motorola finally lost to Intel in the microprocessor processor, met Nokia in the mobile phone, and in the signal processor ( DSP) lost to Texas Instruments (TI).A lot of people asked me if it was possible for Yahoo to catch up with Google in the search field, and I definitely answered - no, because it is impossible for Yahoo to focus on this field.Sometimes a good company doesn't do exactly what Wall Street wants.

If we could go back in time, let Motorola and Intel switch at that time, that is, IBM PC uses Motorola's processor, and the server manufacturer and Apple hand over to Intel.Then after two decades of development, it will be difficult for Motorola to become the leader in the semiconductor field, because its internal problems cannot be solved.