lt cap,

There sure are a lot of powerful names in that alliance to attempt another takedown of Goliath. (BTW, I don't think that Seagate has made a similar move to Western Digital - acquiring a NAND flash company for the ongoing transition from mechanical drives to solid state storage.) There's a little bit of irony there - Micron is part of the 'alliance', but a bit ago INTC and Micron announced some post Nand flash product they produced together that is supposed to just blow the standard flash storage away in terms of speed and performance. And I have paid attention to your post on Intel execs leaving. And I still acknowledge that INTC has some very difficult challenges (including permanent pc decline/slowdown and diverisfying its niches - the demand for 2nd tier cpus reported a decline today, so Taiwan semi and like fabs are getting hit today.)

Still, I'm an INTC die-hard, I guess. Perhaps they're just extending but not defeating the inevitable (kind of like QE?) And in your scenario, they may end up, as the US was described in Vietnam, as 'a pitiful, helpless giant.'  Or - perhaps they are a combination of powerful and nimble enough to do some transformaions. Notthat I know how or if this works but....if they lose CPU dominance, but own the very core of next-gen solid state storage, do they gain or lose on the whole?

Now, I don't believe that Intel is like the Titanic, and if I continued to hold it I will go down with the ship. But I am wearing my rubbers, just as a hedge.