Jon Rubinstein Takes Over As Palm CEO

Well, isn't this something? We knew that Palm was looking to reinvent itself after the Centro, and that was never more apparent than when the slipping company managed to convince Apple's own Jon Rubinstein to step in and take on a high-level management position. Jon is largely credited with putting the wind back in Palm's sails and pushing the company to engineer the company's recently launched Pre.

Thus, it should come as no surprise to see many similarities between the iPhone and the Pre. Heck, the Pre is even recognized by iTunes, and users can sync music and multimedia to it the same way you can with Apple's own smartphone. All parallels aside, the news here is that the man we've been talking about is now the boss of all bosses at Palm. After sixteen years at the helm, Ed Colligan (shown below) has decided to step aside and allow Mr. Rubinstein to take over as CEO.


Back in October of 2007, Jon joined the company in the role of Executive Chairman. He was tasked with "bringing innovation back to Palm," and it's safe to say he succeeded. On June 12th, just days after the Pre launched on Sprint, Jon will grab his neat seat in the corner office in Sunnyvale. Of note, Colligan won't be detaching himself entirely from the Palm lifestyle; after taking an undisclosed amount of time off, he'll be joining Eleation Partners in order stay connected from a distance. Given the timing here of the change, we have to believe this was somewhat planned. Rubinstein had this to say about his new role: "I am very excited about taking on this expanded role at Palm. 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. With Palm webOS we have ten-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."


With an ex-Apple employee at the top of Palm, we're truly excited to see what'll come next. For the longest time, Palm's hardware and software was world-class, and we're excited about it returning to form in the future.