HP Loses Another Exec Who Quickly Touches Down in Nokia World - The UpStream

HP Loses Another Exec Who Quickly Touches Down in Nokia World

posted Friday Oct 28, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

HP Loses Another Exec Who Quickly Touches Down in Nokia World

This piece of news is a public service announcement. To every company not named HP, if you ever wanted an idea of how to further implode your company, keep reading. This week, after CTO Shane Robison hit the dusty trail in search of greener pastures, we thought that it would be the last bad thing we'd see out of HP. Well, something else happened that isn't helping them out one bit.

What happened and what's next for HP? We have the scoop after the break.

HP's VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, Richard Kerris, is out. If you recall, Kerris was hired into the webOS side of HP earlier in the year, after being the CTO of Lucasfilm and having the same title at Apple as he did at HP. I suppose that the discontinuation of webOS certainly didn't help his stock in the company.

HP commented on the matter, cordially, of course.

Richard Kerris, vice president, Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS, has decided to leave HP to pursue an opportunity outside of the company, effective immediately. We are grateful for his service and contributions he has made to HP and the webOS community.

That pursuit of an "opportunity outside of the company" has ended as quick as it had begun. Kerris has landed and set up shop at Nokia, where he will be the head of global developer relations. I agree, Mr. Kerris, the term "global" has a far better ring than "worldwide".

Nokia's senior VP of developer and marketplace, Marco Argenti, posted on his Twitter account about Kerris' arrival.

Great people are what makes the difference, always. I'm excited to welcome Richard Kerris in my team as Global Head of Developer Relations.

It should be noted here that after the HP firesale, the company moved its webOS team into its Office of Strategy and Technology division, where Kerris started to answer to the now-departed CTO Shane Robison. It's completely possible that Robison leaving could have been the final nail in the coffin for Kerris.

Now, while his departure may not completely cause a dissolution of webOS or their community, it does affect where the innovative operating system might end up next.

One could hope that Samsung or even Amazon might have the know-how to take the reigns of the beloved and almost forgotten OS, because as far as webOS is concerned, the matter is still up in the air. HP's new CEO, Meg Whitman has said she will be deciding in the next couple of months what will happen to webOS on a long-term scale.

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