Thursday, March 24, 2011
Anand Chandrasekher has resigned his position as senior vice president and general manager of Intel Corp's ultra mobility group (UMG), leaving Intel after 24 years to pursue other interests.
Neither Chandrasekher nor Intel have stated where the Cornell University educated engineer and MBA is moving to. Some have speculated that Chandrasekher might make a good fit for AMD's open CEO spot, left vacant by Dirk Meyer's sudden resignation in January.
Regardless of such speculation, Chandrasekher's experience could support a high-level position. Prior to his UMG position, Chandrasekher was senior vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group, responsible for worldwide sales and marketing operations and serving Intel's global customer and market needs. During his time at the company, Chandrasekher was also vice president of the Intel architecture group and general manager of the Intel architecture marketing group. Chandrasekher formed and led Intel's workstation platform group and was its general manager through 1999. From 1995 to 1997 he served as technical assistant to Craig Barrett, who mostly served as Intel COO at that time.
Chandrasekher is best known as the mobile point person at Intel. In one of his recent positions at Intel -- vice president and general manager of the mobile platforms group -- Chandrasekher led the team that delivered Centrino processor technology to market. Under his leadership, the mobile group became the fastest growing business unit at Intel.
Chandrasekher has also been the face of mobile at Intel for some time, appearing at various industry events, including IDF (Intel Developer Forum), Computex, and DigitalLife, promoting various Intel technologies, including Moorestown.
Most recently Chandrasekher has touted Intel's work on smartphones. At February's Mobile World Congress, Chandrasekher presented a prototype of Intel's Medfield, announcing that the processor will ship in an Android phone. Chandrasekher also used the presentation to call out ARM CEO Warren East saying that Medfield will run at faster performance and lower power than ARM alternatives.
Intel faces a formidable challenger in ARM when it comes to smartphones. Analysts have questioned how Intel will compete in this market, noting Intel's track record of poor performance in penetrating new markets outside of traditional PCs. Also in question as to Intel's place in the market is Microsoft's announcement at January's CES (Consumer Electronics Show) that the Windows operating system will run both x86 and ARM CPU architectures.
Chandrasekher further used the Mobile World Conference presentation to tout MeeGo, a Linux-based program that saw Intel and Nokia merge their Moblin and Maemo software platforms to target a wide range of computing devices, including smartphones. About one year after MeeGo was announced and just weeks after CES, however, Nokia last month stated plans to adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy.
Despite these challenges and Chandrasekher's departure, Intel said it remains committed to this business. "We continue to make the investments needed to ensure that the best user experience on smartphones and handhelds runs on Intel Architecture, and to ship a phone this year," said David Perlmutter, executive vice president and Intel architecture group general manager, in a statement on the resignation.
Perlmutter continued to thank Chandrasekher for his service to Intel and wished him well in his future endeavors.
Effective immediately, Mike Bell, vice president of Intel architecture group, and Dave Whalen, vice president of the group, will co-manage UMG.
By: DocMemory
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