A rumor that Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) president and COO Steve Mollenkopf was under consideration for the open CEO position at Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) apparently lit a fire under Qualcomm’s board, which announced Friday morning that Mollenkopf will be the company’s new CEO beginning in March.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Mollenkopf was under consideration as Microsoft’s new CEO and named Microsoft’s Satya Nadella as a strong internal choice for the job. Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) CEO Alan Mulally continues to be under consideration, but his lack of experience in the technology sector appears to be working against him.

Mollenkopf has been with Qualcomm for nearly 20 years and is credited with leading the company to its position as the world’s largest mobile chipset supplier. He will replace Paul Jacobs who was also named this morning as executive chairman of Qualcomm’s board. Jacobs is only 50 years old and is the son of the company’s founder.

For Jacobs to step aside in favor of Mollenkopf speaks volumes about the company’s desire to keep Mollenkopf. Jacobs has raked in a cool $58 million in the past three years as the company’s chairman and CEO.

It is far more common for a company to lose a top manager when that person doesn’t get the top job. Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) lost executive vice-president Ross Levinsohn, who had been the company’s interim CEO, when it named Marissa Mayer to the job.

The deal Qualcomm made with Mollenkopf very likely contains a noncompete clause that would prevent him from leaving for direct competitor like Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) or ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH), and given the interest from Microsoft, maybe even other tech giants like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Sometimes though, even a CEO appointment will not keep a person tied up. Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts said goodbye to the apparel maker to take a job as the senior vice-president for online and retail stores at Apple. When she left Burberry in October, she was the highest paid CEO in the United Kingdom.

Qualcomm’s preemptive move to keep Mollenkopf from going to Microsoft keeps him from following the Levinsohn path out the door, but Microsoft has more than twice the market value of Qualcomm, and there is no question that Microsoft could still make Mollenkopf an offer he would find awfully hard to reject.

Qualcomm’s stock was trading up about 0.9% early in Friday’s, at $73.35 in a 52-week range of $59.02 to $74.19.

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