Thursday, August 20, 2009
Apple CEO to Palm: I’ll Quit Sniffing Your Org Chart if You Quit Sniffing Mine
Apple appears to have a particular affinity for the unwritten no-poaching agreements said to be so popular among the nation’s biggest tech companies. Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that Apple may have quietly negotiated an agreement with Google not to hire away each other’s top talent. Now, Bloomberg claims that the company attempted to win a similar commitment from Palm, but was rebuffed.
Palm has added another Apple alum to its employee roster. Jeff Zwerner, who did stints at Apple as both senior art director and creative director for packaging, has signed on at Palm as senior vice president of brand design.
For Palm, which lost two-thirds of its market value in 2008, today may well be a watershed event–the point at which its long downward trajectory was suddenly reversed, buoyed up by a new operating system too long in coming. At a Consumer Electronics Show event later this morning, the company is expected to uncrate its Nova OS and a line of Nova-powered offerings with which it hopes to reinvigorate the Palm franchise. Hope, of course, is the operative word here.
