Hewlett-Packard has snagged a few high-profile executives to boost its upcoming webOS line of devices.
The first major get is Ari Jaaksi, who used to head Nokia’s MeeGo division. He left the world’s largest handset maker earlier this month for “personal reasons.”
We’re not quite sure why Jaaksi left but these types of moves are expected when new leadership comes – There’s no telling what Stephen Elop plans to do with Nokia yet. You would have though that Jaaksi was in a good spot though, as most expect the company to make a huge push with MeeGo devices.
The chance to reinvigorate Palm and webOS may be alluring but it’s not a guaranteed success. Jaaksi will reportedly be the senior VP of webOS at HP and this will involve leading the engineering team.
Don’t expect any immediate impact on consumers, as we know that webOS 2.0 is essentially done. We’ve also seen a few peeks at what kind of devices will run this next version of the smartphone platform and none have blown our socks away yet.
The HP-Palm deal just closed, so it will take some time for the companies to make a strong push on the smartphone space. Additionally, it takes a long time to create smartphones and tablets, so look for the first few devices to be carryovers from what Palm had on its whiteboard.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as I know I cannot wait to get my greasy fingers on the PalmPad. This should hit the market in early 2011 and I believe that webOS will scale nicely to a larger screen – let’s just hope the specs are up to snuff.
HP has also reportedly snagged Victoria Coleman from Samsung. She ran Samsung’s research and development center and will now focus on app development for webOS.
[Via All Things D]