Palm nabs high-profile hires
The Hewlett-Packard division snags Ari Jaaksi, formerly head of Nokia's MeeGo division, and Victoria Coleman, who recently headed up Samsung's R&D Center in San Jose, Calif.
Earlier this month, Ari Jaaksi resigned as head of Nokia's MeeGo division, citing "personal reasons" as the cause for his departure.
Turns out "personal reasons" was actually a euphemism for "I'm joining Palm."
Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has hired on as Senior Vice President of webOS at Hewlett-Packard's Palm division. He's to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he'll lead Palm's webOS engineering team.
And Jaaksi isn't Palm's only new high-profile hire. Victoria Coleman, who recently headed up Samsung's R&D Center in San Jose is joining the company as well. Her task: to oversee platform and application development for next generation versions of webOS.
Palm's also managed to pull some talent from within HP as well. Steven McArthur, the SVP of the company's consumer applications business, is now heading up product marketing for Palm. Joining him are Enrique Lores, SVP of PSG worldwide sales, who is leading the Palm sales organization. Steve Manser, SVP of product development, oversees product management.
Quite the line-up, and one that bodes well for Palm's future webOS devices and its future at HP.