Palm has just announced an exec shuffle, bumping chairman Jon Rubinstein up to the CEO post. What’s the twist? Rubinstein has head of iPod and Mac divisions at Apple on his CV. Is the war between the iPhone and the Palm Pre only just getting started?
Ed Colligan, CEO at Palm for 16 years, is stepping down to join Elevation Partners, a group of investors which has been Palm’s champion of late, letting Rubinstein step up and take the reigns, after he joined the company in 2007 and helped kick start webOS and the Pre into production.
As head of hardware engineering at Apple in the late 1990s, Rubinstein was key in the creation of the iMac, before becoming head of the iPod division, so if anyone’s capable of bringing Palm back into vogue with the Palm Pre and Palm Eos, it’s him.
The Palm rejig isn’t the biggest of surprises after Rubinstein played a big role in the company’s keynote at CES where the Palm Pre was unveiled, but it’s a bold statement made to Apple just days after it revealed the iPhone 3G S was going head to head with the Pre with a June release.
Out TBC | £TBC | Palm
