CEOh-Snap! It’s Jobs vs. Ruby for Real Now!
It’s been suspected for a while now, but PreCentral.net let us know that Palm has gone and made it all official-like:
Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM) today announced that its board of directors has appointed Jon Rubinstein to lead the company as Chairman and CEO upon the departure of Ed Colligan, who is stepping down after sixteen years of leadership at the company. Rubinstein, who joined Palm as Executive Chairman in October 2007 to help bring innovation back to the company, assumes his role as CEO on June 12. Colligan plans to take some time off, then join Elevation Partners.
As mighty Zeus did before him, Rubinstein came from Apple to slay the titans of Palm past and bring a powerful new pantheon of WebOS devices into their own.
So the former head of iPod hardware becomes the new head of Palm every-ware, and Ruby brings his vision of the iPhone-come-Pre head-to-head with the actual iPhone — and more interestingly — his once and former master, Steve Jobs.
Best of luck!
Meanwhile, TiPb would like to bid a fond farewell to Ed Colligan, who helped found the very industry we hold so dear. Many of us have owned many Palm Pilots and Visor and Palm Treo devices (and Dieter likely still has every single one of them on his desk!) and each was wonderful and innovative in its own time. Enjoy your much-earned respite and here’s wishing health, happiness, and much success with your future endeavors.
Standing ovation
(And who knows, a year from now Colligan might just pop up at RIM with a new OS of his own — how’d that be for poetry?)
June 11th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Awesome! Jobs and Rubinstein should box or something…
June 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
^LMAO
June 11th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Here’s what will happen. Apple buys Palm via a hostile takeover, once integrated, Steve fires Rubinstein. Rubenstein becomes enraged and goes to Android, who buy Microsoft Windows and builds an intelligence chip and renames the company Skynet. There, the technology grows and feels threatened and kills Rubinstein, goes after Jobs. Jobs, goes back in time and fights Rubenstein while in Kindergarten and kills him in the playground. Steve saves all. iPhone 10G is released it looks exactly the same as the 3G, but now it multitasks and has a multi inbox integration. At&T is snubbed and Apple goes to Verizon. AT&T goes nuts and finds a copy of the chip that Rubenstein manufactured and revives him… the war continues….
June 11th, 2009 at 11:51 am
@Moe
That was my full laugh for the day. Thank you!
June 11th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
During all those years at Palm Colligan was the company’s relationship guy with all of the carriers – first in sales then as CEO. I wonder if they have the folks in house that can replace all of that day to day while Ed’s at Elevation? Palm did a great job hiring the developer’s from Apple. Forming a business relationship with the carriers is a whole other matter and a different skill set that Palm is not exactly a master of at this point. And it’s important as they are going to need to fight for subsidy dollars against everyone out there and carriers are not going to subsidize everything or in the amounts that Palm may need.
Then again, this is the same CEO that gave the green light to the Folio, so maybe he won’t be missed after all. And Rubenstein’s take on the Folio may be better timed since that’s where the PC market is being played out right now.