Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has joined Qualcomm's board of directors. The tech executive, who most recently served as senior vice president of product innovation for HP, brings more than 30 years of experience to the table, Qualcomm said in a press release on the matter.
Rubinstein previously worked with Apple to help create the original iPod and served as senior vice president of hardware engineering. From there, he moved on to Palm as executive chairman in 2007 and took over as CEO in June 2001. While there, he tried to help the company reinvent itself with webOS and the Palm Pre line of smartphones. Unable to get the job done, Palm eventually folded and was picked up by HP in 2010.
It was here that Rubinstein and company tried once again to make webOS successful with the HP TouchPad but it just wasn't meant to be. The CEO at the time, Leo Apotheker, was dead set on turning HP into a services company and thus, didn't put enough resources behind the mobile operating system. As such, it was pulled from the market after just a few months. Rubinstein left the company in January 2012.
Rubinstein currently serves on Amazon's board but with Qualcomm, he will be adding years of experience in the mobile sector to a company that builds the chips that power them. His expertise will no doubt go a long way to helping mold Qualcomm's strategy moving forward.