Former Palm Inc. CEO Jon Rubinstein was named senior vice president in charge of Product Innovation in the Personal Systems Group at HP. According to the HP press release, Rubinstein will no longer have direct control over the group responsible for webOS"s continued development. Formerly a vice president at Apple in charge of the iPod development group, Rubinstein was hired at Palm in 2007 and played a key role in the development of webOS and the last Palm branded handsets. In 2009 he was appointed CEO of Palm Inc., replacing Ed Culligan. He was then named head of the Palm Global Business Unit at HP during the acquisition of Palm, Inc. in 2010. In addition, the Palm Global Business Unit is being renamed webOS Global Business Unit. This indeed signals the official end of the Palm brand.
Taking his place will be former Americas Region head, Stephen Dewitt. Tom Bradley, executive vice president in charge of the Personal Systems Group, has nothing but confidence in Dewitt.
"He has demonstrated his ability to forge high-performing teams that architect and execute aggressive strategies for profitable growth across a variety of Silicon Valley innovators, and I"m confident he"ll do the same for PSG"s largest region."
Dewitt joined HP after holding the CEO position at Azul Systems Inc. Previous to that, Dewitt has held executive positions at Sun Microsystems, Inc., Cobalt Networks Inc., and Symantec Corp. Let"s hope this management change allows Jon to do what he does best, and that"s innovate.
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