But the 8086 was used in microcomputers, not mainframes or minis.
The broader interpretation of this idea, that the x86 era saw a shift away from vertically integrated computer manufacturing, is absolutely true. The narrower interpretation, that the 8086 chip triggered a shift away from vertically integrated computer manufacturing, is not.
The "x86 era" is really the era of microcomputer architectures eating mainframes and minis. I suspect that would still have happened if the 68k (or Z8000, NS32000, etc) had won the war instead of the x86.
I have no idea what the prices were. One source reckons a Z-2 was $995 [2], but a price list from 1983 has a system with 64 kB and two floppy drives for $4695 [3]. In 1978, the list price of a 11/780 with half a megabyte of memory, a floppy drive, a tape drive, and two hard disk spindles (possibly not including disk packs, though) was $241,255 [4].
>I suspect that would still have happened if the 68k (or Z8000, NS32000, etc) had won the war instead of the x86.
I think that is probably correct. The economics of "commodity" microprocessors were such that one (or two) would have probably won had the x86 not. (Of course, the shift to horizontal is not just about the microprocessor but volume operating systems, volume scale out servers, packaged software and open source, etc.
The broader interpretation of this idea, that the x86 era saw a shift away from vertically integrated computer manufacturing, is absolutely true. The narrower interpretation, that the 8086 chip triggered a shift away from vertically integrated computer manufacturing, is not.
The "x86 era" is really the era of microcomputer architectures eating mainframes and minis. I suspect that would still have happened if the 68k (or Z8000, NS32000, etc) had won the war instead of the x86.