Oh, Intel definitely has huge margins on its chips, especially the higher-end ones (the higher, the bigger the margin). Intel could use quite a bit more "deflating" there. Even in laptops, which are quite mainstream and getting rapidly commoditized right now (mostly due to some "indirect" competition from ARM devices), Intel's chips are the highest margin component (perhaps with the exception of SSDs, but they probably beat that, too), and Intel's chips can represent up to 40 percent of a laptop's BOM, compared to 10-15 percent for ARM chips in mobile devices.
If you have been wondering why laptops have gotten such terrible displays (or other components) for so long, this is the reason. OEMs have no room for anything else when the processor is 40 percent of their cost.
> If you have been wondering why laptops have gotten such terrible displays (or other components) for so long, this is the reason. OEMs have no room for anything else when the processor is 40 percent of their cost.
The more expensive the processor is, the less (proportional to the total cost) impact a more expensive non-processor part has on the final cost, so I don't think that's the explanation.
> If it isn't on the list of things people look for then manufactures try to save money on it.
So, if I accept that, then the reason laptops have what was upthread called "such terrible displays" isn't that Intel processors are too expensive, its that better displays aren't on the list of things that (manufacturers think) most of the market is looking for.
That's quite a win of the deceptive marketing. Since 2006 I don't pay attention to the CPU (apart from ISA extensions present, but I do SIMD development), the important components of a laptop being display, battery and keyboard. And SSD, as of latest.
It depends on user usage patterns. CPU (to some degree), RAM, SSD and Video card are all high priority items for me. Screen I don't care much about because I prefer to dock and use two monitors... the screen only becomes a factor when I need to be mobile which is usually short bursts of time.
Assuming that's true, it's probably why Apple can make such nice machines: since there are no competitor Macs, they can be built with a sensible emphasis on quality across the board, not to headline specs at a price.
If you have been wondering why laptops have gotten such terrible displays (or other components) for so long, this is the reason. OEMs have no room for anything else when the processor is 40 percent of their cost.