It would've been better to partner with an established Linux distro, or even bought one, as Google did with Android.
Of course, Intel has zero ability to compete in any market that they can't sue their competitors out of existance. Let's have a look, shall we:
x86 CPUs: They hold perhaps a 10-20% performance advantage over their only real competitor, despite 100x the R&D money. They also maintain licensing rights over x86, which means they can decide not to let companies compete with them at all.
GPUs: dismal failure, and sadly, they probably spend more on R&D than DAAMIT.
HPC: They are a joke.
Server NICs: Surprisingly good for the money, must be a completely separate team than the above.
Non-x86 architectures: Epic fail, from ARM to the Itanic.
Software: Massive fail. They are the most open about Linux drivers, unfortunately, they are not stable, and the performance sucks anyways.