Ed Colligan Leaving Palm, Jon Rubinstein Taking Over as CEO

The board of directors of Palm, Inc. has appointed Jon Rubinstein as Chairman and CEO. He is replacing, Ed Colligan, who is stepping down after sixteen years of leadership at the company.

Rubinstein, who joined Palm as Executive Chairman in October 2007, will take on the job of CEO on June 12. 

"I am very excited about taking on this expanded role at Palm," said Rubinstein. "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."

Before joining Palm, Rubinstein was in charge of hardware engineering at Apple. The company came up with iMac and the iBook during his tenure, and he was instrumental in the creation of the iPod.

Good-Bye to Ed Colligan
Ed Colligan plans to take some time off, then join Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that owns a significant stake on Palm.

He has a long history with Palm. He once led the product marketing efforts for the original Palm handhelds in the mid-1990s. He left the company with Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky to form Handspring, which sold Visor handhelds and later developed the first Treo smartphones.

He became president and chief operating officer of Handspring, but when this company was acquired by palmOne (as Palm was known then) he was senior vice president and general manager of the wireless business unit. Later on, he became president of palmOne,, a role he maintained as the company changed its name back to Palm.

Source: Palm

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