The company's growth and new CEO

The Intel board hopes that new CEO Pat Gelsinger (VMWare CEO, formerly Intel's CTO) can successfully continue the company's transformation in the current crisis period.

Intel (INTC) announced on Wednesday that it is changing its CEO to a technology-focused leader, current VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. He will join Intel's board of directors when he takes office on 15 February.

Intel shares, down 4.2% over the past year, were up sharply by 6.97% at the close of trading on positive investor expectations.

In contrast, VMware shares, down 12.4 per cent over the past year, were down sharply by 6.8 per cent on Wednesday.

Critics point out that Intel's main problem has rather been committing a number of strategic mistakes, among them: missing opportunities in the mobile processor market and losing leadership in chip production, which is now held by Taiwan's TSMC, which works on contract orders with the world's largest companies.

Intel customers such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have started to develop their own silicon solutions and outsource production in East Asia.

The announcement of the CEO change was preceded by a call from activist investor Third Point Partners for Intel to "explore strategic alternatives".

Intel had planned to announce the outsourcing of its product manufacturing during its quarterly report. TSMC will reportedly take over production of Intel's new second-generation graphics chip, codenamed "DG2", with a release later this year or early 2022.

Pat Gelsinger has been with Intel for 30 years and was its first CTO. During his tenure as CEO of VMware, he doubled the size of the company.

Amid the news, Evercore ISI analyst reiterated his rating on Intel stock but raised his target price from $55 to $68. Pat Gelsinger said: "Intel's outlook has changed from a half-empty glass to half-full, but given the major challenges ahead (loss of leadership in manufacturing, peak computing workloads), we think it's too early to draw serious conclusions".