However next year there are a few milestones coming up which must be filling Intel executives with dread – competition in a market which is shrinking.

Firstly there will be the much awaited arrival AMD’s Zen. Early rumours suggest not only will the chips be better than anything Intel will have, they will also be cheaper. Unlike many AMD fanboys we don’t underestimate the fabless chipmaker’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. AMD might still stuff up what could be an open goal and let Intel off the hook. AMD depends on getting enough chips to market at the right time, something historically it has always managed to stuff up. Still on paper at least, Intel is going to bat as the underdog.

To make matters worse, the PC market is still shrinking, so any war with AMD will be taking business away from Intel just when it does not need it.

Last Wednesday, Qualcomm entered the PC and server markets with its Centriq 2400 server chips, which started shipping to test customers. The chips have the backing of Microsoft which said that PCs based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 chip would come next year.

Qualcomm is onto a winner here because the chip can also be used in high-end smartphones, giving a cross platform performance which Intel can’t match – particularly after it pulled out of the mobile market.

The jury is still out on whether Qualcomm will succeed, but the company is the first legitimate competitor to Intel in the server, PC, and IoT chip markets.

So now Intel must face both AMD and Qualcomm on its home turf and in a shrinking market. It would need to come up with something new and better, fast. It tends to say the mantra Internet of Things a lot, but so far that gold mine is yet to provide any ore.

Chipzilla has tried its hand at telecommunications and modems. It seemed to be starting a bold new era in that direction when it flogged mobile modems for the Apple iPhone 7. However, that experiment was not particularly successful. Apple had to throttle its faster Qualcomm modems so that they did not show up the weaknesses of Intel’s modems to its customers. Apple wanted to slap Qualcomm over the nose with a rolled-up newspaper for daring to charge it money for its modems, but it ended up slowing down the iPhone 7. It is a mistake it probably will not make again.

Our bet is that Intel will not react to the new pressure. There is a certain arrogance which the outfit has. It has seen off similar problems in the past and might just do so again. However, never has Intel looked so shaky and we predict it will start to suffer next year.