's (NASDAQ: INTC) worst mistake in recent history was its failure to make the technological leap from personal computer CPUs to mobile CPUs. It flopped because the British chip designer Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) licensed more power-efficient designs to chipmakers like Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple.

Intel (which divested its own Arm-based chip unit in 2006 and actually rejected Apple's offer to produce the CPUs for the first iPhone) thought it could conquer the mobile market with more power-efficient versions of its x86 CPUs. But it was dead wrong, and Arm-based chips now power over 95% of the world's smartphones.

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Source Fool.com