“Sitting in a hotel conference room in early December after speaking at a leadership conference in San Francisco, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who has been in the job since May, for the first time outlined some of the historic changes — and the challenges — he faces in remaking Intel. The chipmaker is changing its logo, dropping the Pentium brand, and launching a ‘big bang’ of products throughout 2006,” BusinessWeek reports. Otellini spoke with BusinessWeek Technology Correspondent Cliff Edwards about a range of topics, including Apple Computer:

Edwards: These are some pretty cherished institutions you’re dropping — the Pentium brand, the dropped “e” in the logo. How much trepidation did you feel?
Ottelini: When Eric asked me if I had any sacred cows, I said no. He asked, what around the dropped “e”? And I said if it makes sense, it’s time to do it. He was given pretty free rein to change. And when I saw [the new logo], it just jumped out at me. It reflected that change, where we want to go. There’s a feeling of movement around [the new logo], and the tag line “Leap Ahead” certainly reiterates that.

Tell me about the Apple relationship. You struck the deal in June for them to use Intel chips, which was something of a coup. What does that mean for Intel?
At the end of the day, we live to sell chips. First and foremost, it’s market-expanding for us. Secondly, as I said at the developers’ forum, the thing that Apple really brings to the Intel family of customers is their innovation. They [have an] ability to not just mix hardware and software, which is unique, but also to drop software upgrades rather frequently to take advantage of hardware changes. I think what [Apple CEO] Steve [Jobs] said at the forum is they’ve dropped five releases of the operating system in the last four years. That alone is very appealing. [When it comes to design], they are a front-runner — people copy some of their design elements. I believe as they start taking advantage of some of our lower-power products…it will drive a trend toward smaller, cheaper, cooler.

More in the full interview here.

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Related article:
Think Different: Intel plans to ‘Leap ahead’ by axing ‘Intel Inside,’ ‘Pentium,’ dropped ‘e’ in logo – December 30, 2005