HP, the owner of veteran smartphone manufacturer Palm, has just had a leadership shuffle. Former SAP CEO Léo Apotheker has been announced as the new CEO and President, whose decisions will undoubtedly affect the future of webOS on tablets and phones in the future. Coupled with the announcement, execs have voted in a new chairman of the board, Ray Lane. Outbound interim CEO Cathie Lesjak will stick around as CFO.
HP is a huge company with many different fronts it needs to cover, but these days, many are curious about how they will do in the tablet arena given the recent competition. Lots of hints of the next version of webOS have been showing up over the last little while, so even without Apotheker around, HP and Palm have been readying their first product together. It’s hard to telegraph exactly how the new CEO will handle Palm, especially with all of the other balls he’ll have to juggle, but his perspective is certainly broad and far-reaching. He has admitted to being both an iPhone and BlackBerry addict, so he knows the competition fairly personally. He also has some heavy green sensibilities, which I’m sure will be applied to upcoming Palm phones as much as HP’s other products.
[via HP]