Some of the bad karma left over from Palm’s 2009 demise seems to be carrying over to the company’s new owner, HP.
Just days after HP CEO Mark Hurd resigned amid a sex scandal, Tech Crunch says it has confirmed that Peter Skillman, Palm’s VP of Design, has decided to take his skills elsewhere. No word yet where.
Skillman spent 11 years at Palm, the flagging company that invented the PDA, which HP bought this summer, presumably for its webOS, an operating system considered by many to be one of the finest out there. Skillman was instrumental in development of the Palm Pre, which received mostly positive reviews, but was overwhelmed by the competition, namely the Apple iPhone 3G S, which was released within weeks of the Pre in the summer of 2009. The subsequent release of iPhone 4 and a flurry of Android-based devices has made the Pre an also-ran.
Three other Pre developers have left Palm/HP in the last few months to join other technology companies. Palm CEO John Rubenstein is one of the few senior executives left from the old company.
