Intel Corp. is energetically searching for a replacement to chief executive Paul Otellini, who set to retire in May, both inside and outside the company. Two names that recently re-emerged as potential candidates to lead Intel into the new era of computing are Sanjay Jha, a former executive from Motorola Mobility and Qualcomm as well as Patrick Gelsinger, a former executive from Intel Corp. and now the head of VMware.

Intel plans to elect the new chief executive officer at the annual shareholder meeting on May 16, 2013. So far, the company does not have any official candidate for the role, which importance is hard to overestimate as the company needs a major reformation to be competitive in the next decade. In addition to traditional businesses, the new chief exec of the world’s largest semiconductor needs to concentrate on new challenges, such as ultra-mobile connected computing, cloud computing, contract manufacturing and a number of others.

As a long-time executive of Qualcomm and Motorola, Sanjay Jha knows the market of mobile computing and communications pretty well and his experience will be of great value to Intel. However, he does not have experience in businesses traditional to Intel, which are high-performance highly-integrated microprocessors as well as ultra large-scale manufacturing.

Patrick Gelsinger may possibly be one of the most likely candidates to replace Mr. Otellini. He worked at Intel for nearly thirty years, was chief technology officer of the company and is responsible for a number of breakthrough products, including i486, Intel DX2, Pentium Pro and a number of others. Besides knowing Intel, Mr. Gelsinger, who has been working at EMC and then at VMware since 2009, knows storage technologies and cloud computing, which makes him even more preferable candidate.

Potential internal successors to Paul Otellini include chief operating officer Brian Krzanich, chief financial officer Stacy Smith and software head Renee James, according to media report. All three potential candidates are now executive vice presidents of Intel.

Intel, founded in 1968, has never filled its top post with an executive from outside. Historically, Intel tried to choose executives with either engineering or marketing backgrounds to run the company, but nowadays the situation is somewhat tougher as Intel is facing a strategic inflection point of the PC market. The demand is shifting towards mobile devices these days, which requires engineering, execution and marketing expertise to run the company.

Tags: Intel, EMC, VMware, Semiconductor, Qualcomm, Business