Nokia hires Peter Skillman, former Palm Design VP, as MeeGo user experience chief (update: confirmed)
Now this, this is what we call exciting. Nokia has managed to scoop up Peter Skillman from the wreckage of the HP/Palm merger. One of the many senior VPs to leave Palm upon its assimilation …
Context & Ripple Effects
Nokia's hire lands weeks after HP absorbed Palm, a deal that scattered webOS-era executives rather than retaining them — Skillman left his senior VP post as part of that exodus. The pickup comes just as Nokia opens its London Nokia World show with a combative 'we're not sorry we're not Apple' posture from leadership, framing the hire as part of a broader fightback narrative.
For Nokia, the target is MeeGo, the Linux-based platform meant to drag its user experience up to iPhone and webOS standards. Hiring the design executive behind the rival platform's interface is the clearest signal yet that Nokia sees its gap as a software-craft problem, not a hardware one.
First-order effects
- Peter Skillman takes charge of MeeGo user experience at Nokia immediately, giving the platform a design leader who built and shipped a competing touch UI at Palm.
- Palm loses another senior design figure following the HP merger, deepening the integration risk on the webOS team HP paid roughly $1 billion-plus expectations to acquire.
Second-order effects
- HP now has to prove webOS can retain and motivate the remaining Palm design and engineering staff, or its acquisition thesis erodes through attrition rather than product failure.
- Rival platforms — Apple's iOS and Google's Android — face a Nokia that is importing outside design DNA, raising the bar for what counts as competitive UX in the 2010-2011 flagship cycle.
Third-order effects
- The move fits an emerging structural pattern of the smartphone era: platform wars fought through poaching raids on acquired companies' talent pools, turning every handset M&A event into a free-agent market for OS specialists.
- If MeeGo ships with credible Skillman-led UX, Nokia's problem becomes execution speed against ecosystems — if not, the hire becomes evidence that talent alone cannot close an ecosystem gap, a tension the industry will keep testing.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are competing for scarce user-experience talent liberated by consolidation deals, making post-acquisition retention the quiet battleground beneath the OS war.