It’s the changing of the guard. In an continuation of Palm’s reinvention of itself, pioneering ex-Apple exec and Pre torch-bearer Jon Rubinstein will be sitting in the CEO chair at Palm come Friday (the 12th). Ed Cooligan, the current CEO, will be moving behind the curtain to work with Elevation Partners, a major investor in Palm.
Whether they bet the job on the success of the Pre or had it arranged months ago, it’s probably a good step for Palm to take: the smaller and more agile Palm with its new OS and design will likely function better under the guy who was instrumental in that change.
Rubinstein worked at Apple from ‘97 to ‘06, and was most recently General Manager of their iPod division before going over to the Palm side. You can bet he took a lot of Apple lore with him over to Palm; it’s no coincidence that the new Palm device manages to have an Apple-ish flair without biting on the iPhone too directly.
From Reuters:
Jonathan J. Rubinstein has served as one of Palm Inc directors and Executive Chairman since October 2007. Prior to joining Palm, from February 1997 to April 2006, Mr. Rubinstein was a Senior Vice President at Apple, Inc., a provider of personal computing devices and related software and peripherals, and served most recently as the General Manager of the iPod Division. Mr. Rubinstein earned a B.S. and an M.Eng in electrical engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. in computer science from Colorado State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
This is a good news for Palm and probably a bad news for Apple.
Palm Pre simply is awesome….rock on Rubinstein!!!
http://www.livbit.com
Brian have you been in a Tech news comma? Don’t get me wrong, the Pre is a solid 7/10 phone, but Apple will not be phased for a second by it. For one, the current iPhone 3G is 10x better than the Pre already. Next week, June 17, the iPhone 3.0 OS will be realeased and make the iPhone 100x better than the Pre. Then June 19th, when the new iPhone 3G S is released, the Pre will be long forgotten. I really wanted Palm to succeed but they shot themselves in the foot by knowingly releasing their 1st gen touch phone just days before the iPhone. Not only that, but the Pre is a little “Pre”-mature, in that it tries to incorporate multi-tasking with its applications but it just kills the battery. Finally, the Pre only has 12 Apps compared to the iPhones 50,000+, and now with the release of the new iPhone and 3.0 OS it brings a whole new world of Apps on top of all of the already many thousands of outstanding ones…
“Girlfriend in a Comma I know, I know it’s serious…”
Did they want to wait til after the sales numbers came in?
I know, that’s what I’m saying. It’d be funny if they wagered the job on the Pre sales.
Kind of dumb to put him at CEO if the company was going to crap out because of a pre failure. So, its good for everybody that it waited until after the launch.
When do we get an AT&T Pre?
Don’t these companies have non-competes?
It’s no fun if there’s no competition! Let them work at Palm and see what they can do to best Apple.
Seriously, fuck the Pre. Its pre-tty lame…pre-tty retarded, i just dont get the hype.
Hater.
at least use original “pre” puns…
I thought “pre-tty retarded” was pretty original, albeit in bad taste.
To me it is a bit of a brow raiser that a group of individuals have moved to Palm from Apple. Jon Rubinstein is a significant one however I remember reading an article about many former Apple employees moving to Palm and having direct influence on the construction of the Palm Pre. Is Palm’s direction to to be the new Apple or is there a even sneakier plan to covertly make Palm become Apple. hhhmmm.
Pre sucks. He’s going down with the ship I guess.
people are wasting a lot of cycles trying to draw conclusions about apple from this guy’s career path.
the company has a lot of talented & wealthy alumni.
he’s simply a man who wants to do interesting things and get rich doing so — precisely what he was doing at apple.
Please correct the name of the previous CEO – it is Ed Colligan not Ed Cooligan.
Its about time they removed Ed Colligan who brought Palm down single handedly with mistakes and arrogance.
Palm knows they are toast and they might be aiming for a buyout exit from a larger player that needs the Apple employee MOJO they have collected and WebOS to compete with Apple and Google. Nokia is a good candidate as well as LG or Samsung.
There has always been rumors of NOKIA and MOTOROLA interested in Palm…
MOTO decided to buy Good Technologies….so the Palm thing has faded…
Nokia is courting MSFT and GOOG …..so I don’t think that’s gonna go neither…
BTW…what happened to the Window Mobile Palm phone?…one of the Treo’s had it….
pre is final nail in blackberry’s coffin
I worked with Ed, and with Palm (palmOne back then) when the original Treo’s came out…
Great product, artistically design. But that’s where the fun ended. Poor marketing, even worst business operations. The only reason it did so well was because it was alone in the smart phone arena and people really wanted something like this.
Ed is one of the original Palm Pilot creators. But that was also his problem. He’s an engineer, and always will be. The smart phone market is entering maturity. You need a good product, but you also need good “everything else”….marketing….sales….partners…..business process….logistics….etc.
That’s what I hope the ex-Apple team (because there are a few ex’es there now) will bring to the table…
Ooops….got a SMS on my BlackBerry….be back later….
this is how i see it….everyone already expects Palm to fail. If Rubenstein turns the ship around, he’s a hero. If he fails…well it’s not a big surprise.
Personally I have been a Palm user for years but also a big fan of the iPhone and of the platform. Unfortunately, much of my business is conducted on the mobile phone so I do need a more reliable service. ATT would kill my business! The Pre does have a prayer. If they can start getting developers to develop apps on their platform and maybe a few celebrities to adopt it, then maybe. Yes the support multi tasking but i don’t think it’s enough for the general public to switch over. It’s simply not a big enough pain point for the average consumer.
and tostadas point….I think they will need more than Apple innovation. they’re going to need some crafty Apple marketing. How many of you out there switched over because of the witty Apple commercials. Case in point.