Intel sends Sean Maloney to grow its business in Beijing

CHIPMAKER Intel has confirmed that it wil send EVP Sean Maloney to China to expand its business there and take on the role of chairman.

This will not be Maloney's first assignment in the region. In 1995, Maloney moved to Hong Kong to manage Intel's sales and marketing activities in Asia Pacific. In 2006 he was promoted to executive vice president and became co-general manager of the Intel Architecture Group in 2009. He will be replaced by another Intel EVP, Dadi Perlmutter.

Maloney might seem like a strange choice because he had a stroke in 2010 and was off on medical leave until January. There was even speculation in March this year that Maloney's medical leave could have left a door open for Intel to hire HP's Todd Bradley as Intel's CEO Paul Otellini looks for another candidate as his replacement.

However apparently Bradley either wasn't approached or said no, and Maloney came back on the scene and has been assigned to guide Intel's business development in China.

Intel simply can't afford to rock the boat on the Chinese government's digital censorship stance and Maloney's new post shows that the world's largest chip vendor is serious about tapping into one of the world's largest markets.

Chipzilla has always kept quiet about Chinese government suppression of human rights and internet censorship. Unlike Google, Intel doesn't have much infrastructure in the glorious People's Republic that can be blocked by Chinese authorities, so we're not comparing like for like.

But the company is likely to be even more circumspect now that it is sending Maloney into the country to promote its interests there. In fact, the only reference we can find to any Intel pressure on the Chinese was during 2004. Then, Otellini said Intel encouraged China to support a global standard for WiFi. µ