Now consider for a second how many people will seriously not purchase a given CPU because it did not have solder. Seriously. I would be very surprised if it added up to even 100000 total.
In the end, even with bad press and all, it's clearly the profitable move for Intel.
It's rather obvious I was replying to a post where certain assumptions were made. Namely 100M units sold and a total of $25M in savings, and using those values to justify the TIM decision. My reply was simply to put that $ value saved into perspective.
Now I see you arbitrarily assuming sale quantities that make the case for Intel's choice of TIM seem reasonable. Who are you really?
Also, a few others seem to be stuck in the thought train that it MUST be some other reason, even though no other one is apparent, because to admit Intel doing this for economic reasons, is too much of a shock.
Intel has great engineers, but I've seen many dominant successful organizations hijacked by more political short sighted ambitious players as they rode that success wave. Any mediocre leader can appear to be great when you have such a lead. Sports, the military, businesses, etc, all have examples of this.
This, in my view, is Intel's true battle.