Rubinstein, Man Behind Palm Pre, Gets Crowned CEO

Palm has a new CEO. The company announced June 10 that it has promoted Jon Rubinstein from executive chairman to chairman and CEO. Rubinstein is said to be the man behind the Palm Pre, the company’s new darling.

“I am very excited about taking on this expanded role at Palm,” Rubinstein said in a statement. “Ed and I have worked very hard together the past two years, and I’m grateful to him for everything he’s done to help set the company up for success.”

Speaking of the Pre and its lauded operating system, he continued, “With Palm webOS we have 10-plus years of innovation ahead of us, and the Palm Pre is already one of the year’s hottest new products. Due in no small part to Ed’s courageous leadership, we’re in great shape to get Palm back to continuous growth, and we plan to keep the trajectory going upward.”

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Rubinstein is a former Apple employee who heavily contributed to the iPod and iMac, and he brought much of the expertise garnered at Apple to Palm.

“I worked with [Apple co-founder] Steve [Jobs] for many years and learned a tremendous amount from him, the value of user experience and design taste,” Rubenstein said at the seventh annual D: All Things Digital conference in California, according to the show’s official Website.

“On the engineering side, I helped create the engineering culture at Apple, so obviously, the engineering culture at Palm bears some similarities to it.”

Rubinstein takes over for Ed Colligan, who is “stepping down after 16 years of leadership,” according to Palm.

Colligan first trumpeted the Palm Pilot, and he helped to start Handspring, which was behind the design and development of the Treo.

According to Palm, Colligan will take some take off before joining Elevation Partners, which is partly owned by U2’s Bono and Roger McNamee, the Palm investor who helped bring the Pre to the public’s attention by suggesting it would replace the iPhone as “the coolest product on the market.”