Intel spends $9 billion on 45 nanometre fabs
 

WHILE AMD IS introducing 65 nanometre quad-core Barcelona (Intel code-name: K8L) samples into mass production, Intel is building three 45 nanometre fabs: D-1D in Oregon, Fab 32 in Arizona and Fab 28 in Israel.
The combined investment for these three Fabs is worth well over $9 billion, which gives you some reasons why Chipzilla has to fire between 10-12,000 employees worldwide. Some canings will come from gutting marketing and sales people worldwide coupled with India, while Oregon R&D will lose folk too.

The power of having money; the letting go of 10-12k employees is to make more or a warning to the remaining staffs to work harder.

I think it is neither a warning nor is it just to save costs, it's to improve the relation of marketing and R&D.

Intel has realized that their marketing does not sell products but their engineers do by making superior products.

Intel is leading the mobile market because it was superior in the critical area of energy efficency. AMD has taken over the desktop market because it was superior in the critical area of performance.