Erm, ARM partners ship 30x as many cores every year as Intel[1]. ARM is the one with scale.

The actual difference is Intel has proprietary fab technology one or two generations ahead of TSMC etc.

[1] The actual numbers for 2014 are: Intel shipped 400 million chips, ARM partners shipped 12 billion chips.

I think the "scale" being discussed is semiconductor manufacturing, where the area matters and the unit count does not. Each of Intel's CPUs is between 100x and 10x larger than each of those ARM chips. For example a Xeon E5 has a die area of > 450mm^2, the Apple A9 is about 100mm^2, a Tegra 2 is ~50mm^2, and a Cortex is < 5mm^2. Those unit counts you mention are dominated by those smaller parts.

Yes, ARM now has enough scale to compete with x86 (and is starting to). And got there by filling a niche that wasn't taken over.

That's what I said.