Beside the mentioned points concerning the Itanium, there was another one that is important to consider: the Itanium was simply too expensive for many customers

Beside the mentioned points concerning the Itanium, there was another one that is important to consider: the Itanium was simply too expensive for many customers/applications (think: "typical" companies who buy PCs so that their employees can use them for office work; private PC users who might be enthusists, but are not that deep-pocketed; ...).