Qualcomm announced on Friday that it will be promoting its Chief Operating Officer Steve Mollenkopf as its chief executive officer, replacing Paul Jacobs, who is also elevated as the chipmaker's executive chairman. Mollenkopf was deemed in the rumor mill as one of the candidates for the top job at Microsoft Corp, said a Reuters report. The report noted that the promotion was announced one day after a Bloomberg report said the tech giant had been considering Mollenkopf as retiring CEO Steve Ballmer's potential replacement. TechCrunch, in a separate report, highlighted the fact that Qualcomm made the announcement a mere seven and a half hours after the Bloomberg report was published. Mollenkopf, who is also an engineer, will be replacing Jacobs on March 4, which is just after Qualcomm's yearly shareholder meeting.
Although TechCrunch suspected that Mollenkopf's camp had leaked the story to his employer, prompting the immediate promotion, Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher believed that the timing was merely a coincidence. Analysts had also said that Qualcomm's appointment of Mollenkopf ensured continuity of management in the chipmaker.
JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall said in an email, "We believe that Mollenkopf had effectively been running the day-to-day operations of the company, so we don't expect daily operations to change materially."
TechCrunch also said Mollenkopf's appointment was most likely because of his key role to the success of Qualcomm as a dominant player in the mobile industry. Earlier, Mollenkopf led the chipmaker to acquire radio frequency chipmaker Atheros Communications Inc back in 2011 for $3.1 billion, making it its biggest acquisition yet.
The report noted that the mobile market is an area wherein Microsoft had yet to regain its position as a major player. Hence, it was logical to consider Mollenkopf as one of Microsoft's potential candidates, TechCrunch said in its report. The tech news site deduced that since the tech giant expressed its intention to hire from within, Microsoft might just hire Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise chief Satya Nadella, by default at this rate.
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