HP shakeup: webOS now led by Stephen DeWitt, Jon Rubinstein in charge of ‘product innovation’
It looks like HP's decided to shake things up in its webOS division, almost exactly a year after it completed its purchase of Palm. Stephen DeWitt is now the senior vice president of webOS …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP closed its purchase of Palm almost exactly a year ago, and Jon Rubinstein has run the webOS division ever since — through the October 2010 launch of webOS 2.0, the platform's first major release under HP ownership.
This week's move splits that job in two: confirmed reports have Stephen DeWitt taking over as senior vice president of webOS while Rubinstein shifts to leading 'product innovation' inside the division. A year in, HP is putting its own operator in the day-to-day seat over the team it acquired.
First-order effects
- Stephen DeWitt now holds operational authority over webOS as senior vice president, replacing Rubinstein as the division's day-to-day leader.
- Jon Rubinstein moves from running the division he came to HP with, when Palm was acquired, into a product-innovation role with no stated operational remit.
Second-order effects
- With an HP executive rather than a Palm veteran steering webOS, decisions about where the platform ships next — phones, tablets, or licensing — now get made inside HP's existing PC-and-printer management structure.
- Rivals reading the org chart will treat the split as a test of HP's commitment window for acquired mobile platforms, since reassigning a founder-CEO one year post-close is a classic consolidation move.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, large hardware acquirers absorb mobile OS teams within the first year, converting founder-led divisions into parent-managed ones — and the acquired leader's 'innovation' title becomes the soft landing before either departure or dissolution of the original mandate.
- For the broader market, the signal is that standalone mobile platforms survive acquisition only if the buyer gives them a distinct operating structure; folding them under existing business-unit leadership has historically preceded retrenchment, though nothing in this reorg yet commits HP either way.
The trend: Acquired mobile-platform teams are being folded into parent-company management within roughly a year of close, with founders moved aside and the platform's fate tied to the acquirer's hardware strategy.