Intel sat on their asses for way too long for sure. I remember that from the old pentium 2 times. Whatever competitors like amd and cyrix could come up with, they already were several steps ahead and could just release their next gen and reduce the price of the lower end that were competing with others.

When it comes to that it is always a shame that this tech is mostly economically driven and not technologically driven (i.e.: release the best what you have now vs making small intermediary steps on the same thing for 2 or 3 years)