Shares took a nosedive of over four per cent yesterday as investors realised Intel's latest bravado round might be about to bite it in the backside.

Ohio, which showered the chipmaker with a tidy $600 million in onshoring grants and a smorgasbord of tax credits, isn’t precisely chuffed that Chipzilla’s grand plans for a fab have yet to materialise.

The deal was supposed to create jobs and economic growth, but Chipzilla has been dragging its feet. Now, state officials are seriously considering yanking back some of that cash. With around a year left before the company has to beg for an amendment to its original agreements, the clock is ticking on another corporate misadventure.

Meanwhile, Chipzilla's grip on the RAN subsector looks shakier than a three-legged stool at a pub fight. At the Mobile World Congress, ARM unveiled a new tool that could break Chipzilla’s vendor lock-in on Ericsson and Samsung.

By building an abstraction layer using Google’s Highway programming tool, ARM found a way to make its gear play nice with x86 chips—something that was previously out of reach. More importantly, it does so with a negligible processing power hit of just 2.8 per cent, well within the acceptable range.

This could see Ericsson and Samsung slip out of Chipzilla’s iron grip and march into ARM’s open arms.

As for the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street, they aren’t precisely placing bets on a Chipzilla comeback. Analysts have slapped an uninspiring Hold rating on the stock, with just one optimist shouting ‘Buy’ against 25 fence-sitters and five outright doomsayers.

After watching Chipzilla’s stock price crater by 55.24 per cent over the past year, the Street reckons there’s a 14.83 per cent chance of things improving which is not exactly a glowing endorsement.