Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein leaves Hewlett-Packard

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Jon Rubinstein, the former chief executive of Palm who joined Hewlett-Packard after a 2010 buyout, is leaving the company in the latest of several recent management departures.

His exit wasn’t a surprise, according to AllThingsD, which said Rubinstein -- a former Apple executive who helped develop the iPod -- hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices in months.

After former HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced last year that the company was going to stop making WebOS-based hardware, Rubinstein’s role appeared to be reduced and he was assigned to a ‘product innovation role’ that AllThingsD said was a move intended to ‘lessen its PR impact when he finally left.’

The tech blog quoted Rubinstein as saying he was going to take a ‘well-deserved break after four-and-a-half years of developing WebOS.’

An engineer by training, Rubinstein left Apple in 2006 and later joined private equity firm Elevation Partners, a major investor in smartphone maker Palm. In June 2009 he replaced Ed Colligan as Palm’s chief executive.

PalmOS was replaced by WebOS, which was used on several Palm devices and on HP’s TouchPad tablet. This week, HP released a timeline for making its WebOS platform open source, with the goal of completing the process by September.

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-- Andrea Chang