UPDATED 01:16 EDT / APRIL 05 2016

NEWS

Intel purges 3 top execs as Renduchintala makes his presence felt

Two of Intel’s longest serving executives are quitting the company, as the chipmaker continues to revamp its leadership following the hire of Dr. Venkata “Murthy” Renduchintala from rival Qualcomm Inc.

The latest departures were announced in a company-wide email from Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Renduchintala, who is now president of Intel’s client computing and Internet of Things and systems architecture business units.

Company stalwart Doug Davis is set to retire at the end of the year. The 32-year Intel veteran has apparently been pondering retirement for some time, though it’s widely believe that Renduchintala’s presence has probably set that in motion faster than Davis may have liked.

Davis is in charge of Intel’s IoT unit, which CEO Krazanich recently highlighted as one of its few growth sectors. It currently pulls in about $2 billion in income a year, but Intel (along with everyone else) seems to think it’s one of the biggest opportunities for growth there is. Davis will hang onto his job until the end of the year to help transition towards his replacement, the company said.

The bigger departure however is that of Kirk Skaugen, a huge authority at Intel who was most recently in charge of its Client Computing business, essentially its PC chip business, which is by far the company’s biggest. Unfortunately for Skaugen, the Client Computing business has recorded a string of declining quarters in the face of a rapidly declining PC market. Intel says that Skaugen is leaving to pursue his “next career opportunity” without hinting what that might be. Taking over the poisoned chalice in his place will be Navin Shenoy, the company added.

The two departures follow last weekend’s news from Bloomberg that Aicha Evana, head of Intel’s mobile chip business (another badly performing unit), will also be leaving the company “imminently”. The likelihood is that Evan’s departure is a result of his failure to drum up more interest in Intel’s mobile chips – the company has plugged away for years with its mobile silicon chips without making much of an impression. At the end of 2015, Intel controlled just one percent of the mobile market share, which has to be an unmitigated failure in anyone’s book.

Renduchintala arrived on the scene four months ago, having spent almost a decade at Qualcomm. The move surprised many at the time, not least because Intel promptly created an entirely new business unit that saw both Davis and Saugen’s groups fall directly under his control.

Analysts believe that the move confirms speculation that Intel is planning to give greater power to outside hires as a means of changing its company culture.

“Intel occasionally hired outsiders into VP positions in the past, but this broader wave of newcomers, with support directly from the top (Krzanich), is empowered to drive change throughout the organization,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of the Linley Group, in a recent blog post.

Image credit: pestoverde/Flickr/CC by 2.0

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