It’s an open secret that although Intel may be inside everything related to personal computers, the chip-manufacturer has struggled mightily to compete in the mobile market. With all due respect to the chip giant, all its efforts to break into the mobile segment have been, to say the least, ordinary.
Whether it’s the ill-fated MeeGo platform, the verbal war with ARM or its lousy execution and lousy decision making, Intel has lost more than gained in the mobile market. However, there’s no doubt that Intel still holds perhaps the industry’s best talent and mobile has been no exception to that rule.
Last year, Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, left the company. And yesterday, arch rival Qualcomm announced that it has appointed Chandrasekher to run marketing as the company expands in the mobile device space.
Life has come full circle for Chandrasekher. At Intel, his job was to penetrate the stronghold of Qualcomm and other specialists in the mobile segment. And now, he returns to the fray to help Qualcomm eat into Intel’s market share in new markets, such as notebooks and convertible PCs. How times have changed!
Chandrasekher spent 24 years working at Intel and he played an instrumental role in developing the Pentium 4 processor, then later led the teams that produced the Atom processor line and the power-sipping Centrino chipset for notebooks. Intel finally launched its first Atom-based smartphone earlier this year but it failed to impress the masses. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science, as well as a master’s in operations research from Cornell University and an MBA from Cornell.
At Qualcomm, Chandrasekher will serve as the CMO and he’ll report directly to Steve Mollenkopf, the chipmaker’s president and CEO.
“His extensive experience in marketing and management makes Anand well-suited to help grow Qualcomm’s communications and marketing efforts across the world and to amplify our consumer offerings to new audiences,” Mollenkopf said in a statement.
Qualcomm has done well off-late, its second calendar quarter jumped 17 percent over the same period in 2011. Given that Qualcomm is also contracted to be a supplier of ARM processors for Windows Surface RT tablets, it will be an interesting time for Chandrasekher to deal with his ex-employer’s arch rival.
Chandrasekher’s appointment at Qualcomm is another example of the ongoing turbulence in the mobile chip segment. Jim Keller, one of world’s most well-known chip designers, left Apple last week and joined AMD to lead chip development for mobile devices.
We at TheTelecomBlog wish Chandrasekher good luck in his new role at Qualcomm.
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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.
