Intel appoints ex-Qualcomm executive to head PC, IOT and software business

Intel Corp, the world's biggest chipmaker, said it appointed Murthy Renduchintala as company president with oversight over two of its biggest business divisions.

According to Intel, Renduchintala, will oversee a new unit including Intel's biggest revenue generating PC chips unit and one of its fastest-growing businesses, Internet of Things, divisions.

"The calibre of leadership and experience Murthy brings to our executive team represents a significant move toward delivering the benefits of our strategy even faster than before," Intel chief executive officer Brian Krzanich said in the statement.

While Intel and Qualcomm are leading producers of microprocessors, they have largely cut out their turf. Intel controls 80 per cent of the market for chips that power PCs and all of the server market, but suffered significant losses in a failed attempt to gain a foothold in Qualcomm's mobile phone processor business.

On its part, Qualcomm announced its first test chip for servers and had been trying hard to find buyers for its designs for PCs.

Renduchintala was at Qualcomm for over a decade and came to co-head its chip business. The company recently appointed Cristiano Amon to head that division.

"Murthy was offered another role within Qualcomm, but he chose to leave the company instead,"  San Diego-based Intel said in an email.

According to Intel's statement yesterday, Renduchintala would become president of the newly created ''Client and Internet of Things (IoT) Businesses and Systems Architecture Group.''

Intel added the division would oversee a number of Intel organisations - platform engineering group; client computing group; Internet of Things group; software & services group; design tools and  technology group.

Under Renduchintala's oversight Qualcomm developed the Snapdragon mobile chips, which power the majority of high-end Android smartphones in the world.

According to commentators, in his new role at Intel Renduchintala will clearly help define the future direction of Intel's mobile chip efforts.