On the heels of the Palm Pre release, Palm announced that Jon Rubenstein will be taking over for Ed Colligan as CEO. Colligan has been with the company for 16 years and will be leaving to join the private-equity firm Elevation Partners that now owns 25 percent of Palm.
Roger McNamee, co-founder and general partner of Elevation Partners, was responsible for recruiting Rubenstein, a former Apple executive who spearheaded the Pre’s design as well as the new webOS. While at Apple, Rubenstein acted as head of development for the iPod and was partly responsible for the redesign of Apple’s line of iMac desktop computers.
"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," Rubenstein said in a statement released by Palm.
The Palm Pre, which launched June 6, was the cause of long lines outside Best Buy and Sprint stores. In a press release, Sprint claimed the Palm Pre had broken previous first day and first weekend sales records for any Sprint device.
However, Sprint and Palm are seeing competition from the iPhone. Apple slashed the price of the iPhone 3G, thought to be the Pre’s closest competitor, in half, reducing the price to $99 dollars just two days after the Pre was launched at $199.
Wall Street expressed a favorable opinion of the appointment of Rubenstein to CEO, as shares of Palm were up just over $1 to $13.02 in early trading. Palm will announce its fourth-quarter fiscal 2009 financial results on Thursday, June 25, shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern time.