It’s basically innovation 101: don’t spend more money developing something if you know you customers needs are already met.
They likely knew what apple were up to with efficiency cores several years ago, and only decided to accelerate manufacturing of Alder lake once they realised the market was cool with that form or architecture.
Putting effort where demand is, doesn't seem like the stupidest strategy to me. Creating demand for a new kind of product or service is nice, but reaching a market where their needs are, seems clever.
What baffles me about this 'innovate on something else than peak perf' is... What did they innovate on massively instead then, if not that? Apart from AVX512?
They likely knew what apple were up to with efficiency cores several years ago, and only decided to accelerate manufacturing of Alder lake once they realised the market was cool with that form or architecture.