A lot of RISC CPU arches which were popular in the 1990's declined because their promulgators stopped investments and bet on switching to IA64 instead. Around the year 2000, VLIW was seen as the future and all the CISC and RISC architectures were considered obsolete.
That strategic failure by competitors allowed x86 to grow market share at the high end, which benefited Intel more than the money lost on Itanium.
That strategic failure by competitors allowed x86 to grow market share at the high end, which benefited Intel more than the money lost on Itanium.