HP hires ex-Nokia Ari Jaaksi to lead mobile software division

Hewlett-Packard

HP has hired Ari Jaaksi who led Nokia’s MeeGo division until earlier this month as a Senior Vice President in its Palm division. He will lead the webOS engineering team.

HP is also further strengthening its Palm division with some additional hirings. Victoria Coleman is joining from Samsung to head webOS application development and a number of internal appointments have been made as well. Among these are Steven McArthur who will lead Palm product marketing, Enrique Lores who will led the Palm sales organization and Steven Manser who will overview product management.

All this is good news for HP’s Palm division which saw a number of key departures (including Matias Duarte who led the webOS UI development) after the merger was completed.

HP is expected to launch new Palm smartphones (including a Palm Pre refresh) and the first webOS tablet in early 2011.

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