It was also because Intel was like this giant steamroller you couldn't compete with because it was also selling desktop CPUs.
Sure they have lower margins on desktop but these brings sh!t tons of cash, cash you will then use for research and to develop your next desktop and server CPUs.
If I believe this page [1], consumer CPUs brought almost $10 billions in 2019... In comparison, server CPUs generated $7 billions of revenues... And these days, Intel has like >90% of that market.
Other players (Sun, HP, IBM, Digital, ...) were playing in a walled garden and couldn't really compete on any of that (except pricing because their stuff was crazy expensive).
So not only they were sharing the server market with Intel but Intel was most likely earning more than the sum of it all from their desktop CPUs...
More money, more research, more progress shared between the consumer and server CPUs: rinse and repeat and eventually you will catch up. And also, they could sell their server CPUs for a lot less than their "boutique" competitors.
You just can't compete with a player which has almost unlimited funds and executes well...
Sure they have lower margins on desktop but these brings sh!t tons of cash, cash you will then use for research and to develop your next desktop and server CPUs. If I believe this page [1], consumer CPUs brought almost $10 billions in 2019... In comparison, server CPUs generated $7 billions of revenues... And these days, Intel has like >90% of that market.
Other players (Sun, HP, IBM, Digital, ...) were playing in a walled garden and couldn't really compete on any of that (except pricing because their stuff was crazy expensive).
So not only they were sharing the server market with Intel but Intel was most likely earning more than the sum of it all from their desktop CPUs... More money, more research, more progress shared between the consumer and server CPUs: rinse and repeat and eventually you will catch up. And also, they could sell their server CPUs for a lot less than their "boutique" competitors.
You just can't compete with a player which has almost unlimited funds and executes well...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/23/intel-intc-earnings-q4-2019....