The competing unix manufacturers didn't need Itanium as an excuse to fold; they were completely non-competitive by the time the itanium came around. Customers d

The competing unix manufacturers didn't need Itanium as an excuse to fold; they were completely non-competitive by the time the itanium came around. Customers didn't purchase a unix system because of the performance of the proprietary architecture but the entire ecosystem provided by manufacturers. DEC and its Alpha was on life support even though it was marginally more competitive against x86 precisely for this reason. The manufacturers that intended to switch to Itanium were either part of HP (compaq & dec) and would have thrown in the towel otherwise or were desperate to remain relevant (SGI). They could never had tried to compete itanium or no itanium. Itanium actually made no impact on the strongest competitors, SPARC and POWER. Not only did Intel lose billions on Itanium but it tied up development resources that couldn't be used against AMD and influenced the decision not to compete in the mobile space.