As Hewlett-Packard prepares to
launch the first new smartphones under the Palm brand since it purchased
the WebOS maker, it's apparently also beefing up its Palm staff with key
executives from some of its rivals.
Ari Jaaksi, who resigned earlier this month from Nokia citing "personal
reasons," is now the senior vice president of WebOS at HP's Palm division,
according to the Wall Street Journal's All
Things D site. At Nokia, Jaaksi was head of the MeeGo division—the
burgeoning operating system developed jointly by Nokia and Intel.
Additionally, HP has reportedly scooped up Victoria Coleman, formerly the
head of research and development at Samsung, to oversee the platform and
application development of WebOS.
And finally, the Palm side of the business has laid claim to Steven
McArthur, HP's senior vice president of consumer applications, who is said to
now head up product marketing for Palm. Joining him, reports All Things D, are
Enrique Lores, senior vice president of worldwide sales for HP's Personal
Systems Group, who now is head of the Palm sales staff, and Steve Manser,
senior vice president of product development, who will oversee product
management.
Previous to the HP purchase, Palm lost a key WebOS executive, Mike Abbott,
its senior vice president of software and services. Abbott
resigned in April as the then-struggling smartphone maker put out the word
that it was interested in being purchased. Wanting to keep its staff of core
employees intact, presumably to make the company more attractive to potential
purchasers, Palm soon after implemented a retention program that offered "equity
awards and cash bonuses" to employees who stayed with the company for two
years. The cash bonus was set at $250,000.
HP announced its intentions to buy Palm in April for $1.2 billion, and the
deal officially went through in July. Since then, HP has made it clear that
Palm's WebOS was a major reason for the purchase and that it plans to release
several devices running the open-source operating system.
"With WebOS, HP will deliver its customers a unique and compelling
experience across smartphones and other mobility products," HP Executive
Vice President Todd Bradley said in a July 1 statement. "This allows us
the opportunity to fully engage in growing our smartphone family offering and
the footprint of WebOS."
With Jaaksi, Coleman and McArthur on board, HP appears better prepared to do
exactly that.
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