Pre designer Peter Skillman latest to leave Palm, entire senior staff now in exodus
By Ross Miller 
posted August 9th 2010 11:10PM
posted August 9th 2010 11:10PM
posted August 9th 2010 11:10PM
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another one bites the dust
@vstican
At this rate palm will actually turn a profit if they don't have som many people on payroll lol
@vstican I thought the senior Palm employees would stay! Too Bad!
@statickeith
Comon Jon come back to apple, hp doesnt deserve your expertise..... seeing as they have a very low customer satisfaction rate and all, if not try to atleast become the next CEO of HP and change them, so they can compete with Apple
@Hell Angel
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2010/01/while-pc-market-rebounds-apple-slips-into-5th-place-in-us.ars
Apple is the one that needs to start competing with HP. And most of the rest of the market for that matter.
@vstican
Steve Jobs impersonation.
@JXCGunrunna
"However, Apple has still commanded premium pricing throughout the economic downturn, keeping its profits intact."
that's the bottom line. Think Steve's not too concerned abt a race to the bottom.
@vstican
It's ok, HP just wanted Palm's IP anyway.
@bravokiloromeo Looks like now they're gonna be facing the "recession".
@vstican
Rats leaving a slowly sinking ship. No wonder why HP's share price took another healthy hit today. I don't know much about Harasser Hurd, but HP should probably have tried to keep this guy on staff. There are going to be some serious power struggles at HP and projects are going to suffer. Might as well forget about any tablets for the time being. HP needs to do something to boost its sagging stock. Attempting to go up against Apple's iPad will only add to HP's woes. I think HP had better just stick to servers and printers and leave the tablet business to those that know what they're doing.
@vstican
Skillman should hop on bored with HTC and get some collaborating design ideas going for Android.
@vstican
I see the new boss at HP is stretching her legs and getting comfortable in her new position. and this is day 1. Already stirring the pot.
@vstican
Papermaster left Apple,
now Skillman is leaving Palm,
Why are these material genius jumping the band-wagon!? Someone stop them before Lazyboy and Uselessman taking their spot.
@JXCGunrunna
"Apple is the one that needs to start competing with HP. And most of the rest of the market for that matter."
You should know by now Apple doesn't participate competing in the corporate market. That's where the bulk of PC sales are made.
So actually Apple competes very well in the markets where they chose to compete. In the US consumer market Apple already has more than 20% share: the premium segment. Meaning Apple owns 90% of the market of computers costing $999 and above, which means the most profitable segment of the entire consumer market. So by capturing this segment Apple has squeezed the competition into a race with each other to the bottom. Apple differentiates its computers with Mac OS X while everyone else is selling Windows, this means generic PC builders are left with nothing but reducing price points with each other and making PCs as cheaply as possible (resulting in very poor quality.) So while Apple takes all the money, everyone else is making unsustainable razor thin margins. --Did you ever wonder how Apple is making more money than any other computer company on Earth? Now you know.
Apple is positioning itself in the near future to expand from the premium consumer market to the middle class consumer market. Meaning there will be a array of new highly competitive products that will continue taking market from competitors. In fact it already has begun:
-- In the education market Apple is wiping the floor with the competition with about 45% share. HP and Dell have about 12% to 15% of the education market each.
-- As for tablets Apple doesn't even have competition, they practically own the whole markert.
One more thing, Apple is making massive gains in the science markets, medical market an in the Law practice market. So while Apple won't compete in corporate sales, they are competing very well elsewhere.
@vstican
WTF is going on !!! ..... seriously why is everyone leaving Palm ???
@JXCGunrunna Apple needs to start competing? Are you kidding me, they are firing on all cylinders. Nice try with the graph. This is six month old. And don't forget the PC shipments you mention include netbooks. Apple doesn't compete in that sector. Apple owns >50% (THINK about it) of the over $1000 market. Apple is doing fine.... with 45B in the cash and securities. Learn some math "dude".
@skateni Apple lost 5th place to Toshiba, not someone racing to the bottom. Not really surprised though, I've used Apple laptops since they released 10.1 but for my next laptot, what Toshiba is offering seems a lot more tempting than MB's and MBP's. Iphone and Ipad have all Apple attention now, and the computer models are just boring and overpriced.
@vstican Papermaster will takeover, perhaps?
@machat
What I meant by "race to the bottom" is in terms of profitability .. face it, so called personal computers are commodity items and so called profits are razor thin. Assuming you make 10 bucks for every pc you sell as compared to 100 bucks for a mac .. you need to sell 100 of them to make a $1000 profit whereas you need to sell only 10 macs to make the same "profit" .. so for "PC" companies, market share is important ( sell many to earn a lot ) so if Acer where to drop their price, ppl would buy Acer and HP/Dell to maintain "profitability" have to drop their price as well to either the same or lower, and the cycle continues .. i.e. a race to the bottom.
@bloop - These guys are all pretty young, and used to working on "the next big thing". They will be back at it somewhere before too long, or maybe they're out hunting for VC money?
@vstican
restate, Come back to Apple Jon, HP doesnt deserve you because all they make is mass market computers, and want to put your /=ucking phone os on the dumb as printer.... You were the one at apple that made usb such a big thing, it is used in all computers now, you should atleast try to become hp's new ceo
@JXCGunrunna
Yeah. Pick the one survey that "proves" your point. Ignore every other one from the past decade!
@vstican
HEY HEY!.... THAT'S STEVE JOBS KIRF LOL
@HighestRanked1
"One more thing, Apple is making massive gains in the science markets, medical market an in the Law practice market. So while Apple won't compete in corporate sales, they are competing very well elsewhere."
LOL do you even read what you write.. Medical and Law Practice markets are corporate markets too dumbass.
@HighestRanked1 "Did you ever wonder how Apple is making more money than any other computer company on Earth? Now you know."
PC side of story is not complete without a mandatory mention of stickers....
@vstican
Never did like the Pre design. Did he design the Pixi? I like that design.
@vstican
Really, who cares?
The great thing about the Pre is WebOS, the design is just meh.
@bloop "Papermaster left Apple,
now Skillman is leaving Palm,
Why are these material genius jumping the band-wagon!?"
Rumor has it that Papermaster actually wasn't up to the standard because he wasn't prepared to get his hands dirty and simply wanted to delegate tasks to lower down staff.
My guess with the HP deal is that the corporate culture threatened the creative freedom the likes of Skillman were used to. You have to remember that when these SVPs have worked on their salaries for as long, they can pick and choose what environment works best for them.
It would be a funny turn of events if all the creative people from Palm like Skillman went to Apple and all the corporate assholes like Papermaster went to HP. Apple already got the Pre UI designer.
@JojoMojo Nice try with the made up percentage. Not even the leading corp. owns 50% of the market share.
i'm guessing this means that HP plans for webOS are conflicting with Palm's vision but then again I can't really trust Palm's judgement.
@iName Yeah because HP wants to put WebOS on printers first then get a new device out
@iName Honestly, I'm thinking good riddance. The hardware on the Palm Pre was absolutely abysmal - so Win - Win?
@iName I'm guessing HP thought a user interface was an OS and only realized the difference after the Palm purchase - and all those Palm guys are now saying "Oh, they really DON'T know what they're doing and THEY'RE in charge!".
Some (arstechnica? I think) guy wrote right after the purchase that this would go down as one of the worst corporate takeovers in history.
A BILLION+ bucks for a user interface.
Lol!
[and, no, it doesn't matter that HP has billions of cash so this purchase was a "small" part of that cash - it's still a BILLION+ bucks!]
@iName Boy, I dont know here. It sure seems like this type of talent defection shows the HP direction is seriously conflicting with what Palm was doing. Granted Palm wasn't very good at making money but they sure put out one helluva OS with webOS.
Apple and now Palm....whats next?
@Stevenk Apple lost all of its Senior VPs?
I little concern about Palm future now. will they really keep making phones or did HP buy them for their IP.
@Complex
Which is worth more ? Their gone to the dogs hardware biz or their IP ?
Why wouldn't they bail? It's no fun being a VP (or any other level employee) for a dead product division.
Anyone want to guess who picks him up first Google or Apple?
@massalo I think if he goes to the interview with the same clothes he is wearing in the picture steve jobs will like him....
@liftedngifted1
"My God it's like looking in a mirror"
@massalo Google is not making phones, at least not yet.
@liftedngifted1 ROFL! Thanks i needed that man. hahahahaha
@massalo HAHA BRILLIANT RESPONSE
@massalo Apple if anything, since Google seems to have its own master plan set for gingerbread. That and Meego will really prompt apple to revisit its UI, and it wouldn't hurt to have the guy who did WebOS's UI on your team.
@ddhboy google has the ui palm guy already i think that guy is hardware design
@massalo
And it's not even an iPad.
@massalo
For some reason; I read that in the voice of Dick Solomon.
I guess he couldn't turn down an offer from Apple to design an iPhone that can actually make phone calls.