HP hires former Apple exec to pitch webOS to developers
HP has hired Richard Kerris, Apple's former Senior Director of Worldwide Developer Relations, to help attract developers to the webOS platform as it attempts to challenge Apple in the smartphone and tablet markets.
HP on Wednesday unveiled several new webOS products, including the TouchPad tablet, as part of its "double down" on the platform. HP executives have said that webOS was the company's primary reason for acquiring Palm in April 2010.
"Today we're embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available," said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager for the Palm Global Business Unit at HP.
During Wednesday's event, Rubinstein revealed that HP plans to bring webOS to Windows PCs to increase the environment's installed base.
TechCrunch reports that HP announced its hiring of Apple veteran Richard Kerris during a developer gathering after the event. Kerris, who previously served as Senior Director for Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations group, will join HP in a similar role as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. In between working at Apple and now HP, Kerris served as the CTO of Lucasfilm for 3 years.
Kerris "held numerous positions at Apple, from managing special projects for the applications division to managing the company's technical marketing strategies for professional applications" from 2001 to 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Given that Kerris' role at Apple was to convince developers for other platforms to build their apps for OS X and assist them in the process, HP appears to have selected him in hopes of bolstering developer interest in webOS. Kerris has his work cutout for him, as webOS is the underdog in the growing mobile space.
A recent comScore report revealed that Palm lost 0.5 percent market share from the September 2010 quarter through the end of the year, leaving it with just 3.7 percent of US smartphone subscribers.
HP on Wednesday unveiled several new webOS products, including the TouchPad tablet, as part of its "double down" on the platform. HP executives have said that webOS was the company's primary reason for acquiring Palm in April 2010.
"Today we're embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available," said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager for the Palm Global Business Unit at HP.
During Wednesday's event, Rubinstein revealed that HP plans to bring webOS to Windows PCs to increase the environment's installed base.
TechCrunch reports that HP announced its hiring of Apple veteran Richard Kerris during a developer gathering after the event. Kerris, who previously served as Senior Director for Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations group, will join HP in a similar role as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. In between working at Apple and now HP, Kerris served as the CTO of Lucasfilm for 3 years.
Kerris "held numerous positions at Apple, from managing special projects for the applications division to managing the company's technical marketing strategies for professional applications" from 2001 to 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Given that Kerris' role at Apple was to convince developers for other platforms to build their apps for OS X and assist them in the process, HP appears to have selected him in hopes of bolstering developer interest in webOS. Kerris has his work cutout for him, as webOS is the underdog in the growing mobile space.
A recent comScore report revealed that Palm lost 0.5 percent market share from the September 2010 quarter through the end of the year, leaving it with just 3.7 percent of US smartphone subscribers.
Comments
HP has an impossible task ahead of them but I really respect them for trying.
I tend to agree. Kerris left just before the introduction of the iPhone. All the developers didn't come till afterwards. Worked at Lucasfilm, a place where everyone wants to work at. Seems that his experience at attracting developers is somewhat untested so I wish them luck.
WebOS is a huge problem for Android and not for Apple. After all HP products are cheaper than Android and are going after a market that is not going to get an iPhone because it is too expensive. No offence to Google but if Android 3.0 is the best they can do for tablets than WebOS will eat them alive.
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There is a reason he no longer held that position during 2007.
Kerris was also senior director of Developer Technologies for Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations group where he managed teams supporting Unix, Java and Cocoa developers working to bring their applications to Mac OS X.
This is the last guy I would have hired to perform these tasks. No offense to him, but this was one of the glaring problems at NeXT. We had Marketing Management who had no technical backgrounds in applied sciences and thus no experience in those fields and zero contacts and/or pull to expand into those markets. Of course, we also had technical guys with absolutely zero marketing and business experience who couldn't manage themselves out of a paper bag after the merger, but I digress.
Richard's background in Communications and all his non-technical work history in the Computer Graphics Arts is commendable:
http://web.mac.com/rkerris/RichardKe.../About_Me.html
However, he has no technical background in any applied science and it doesn't come as a surprise that Apple has suffered severely in growing their Professional Markets beyond the Visual Arts.
Getting AutoCAD in 2010 has to be the fruits of labor by management that was put in place after his departure and other departures.
For Apple to continue growing it's Mac Markets [which continues to thrive and expand quarter over quarter], getting technical management with a taste for networking and making relations [Traditionally known as the MS Windows centric engineering space] will them to have the talent in place that can walk the walk while talking the talk.
For me, seeing the emergence of OpenCL made it clear they were going to take those markets seriously and offer an end-to-end solution where the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch are two more tiers of devices that can attract big industry heavies in the Automotive Industry, Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace, NASA, etc.
I don't see how Richard's prior 3 years at LucasFilm is really going to be a big catch for HP. Personally, his career is in the Animation world and I'm surprised he has ventured out again.
Best luck to him.
I would like to see a few articles on the talent that has taken his place and other individuals positions over the past 3 years to give us all a broader understanding as to where they may or may not focus their talents in the near to far future.
But in the end it will be a Gordon Gecko and Bud Fox romance. You saw how that turned out.
HP has hired Richard Kerris, Apple's former Senior Director of Worldwide Developer Relations, to help attract developers to the webOS platform as it attempts to challenge Apple in the smartphone and tablet markets.
HP on Wednesday unveiled several new webOS products, including the TouchPad tablet, as part of its "double down" on the platform. HP executives have said that webOS was the company's primary reason for acquiring Palm in April 2010.
"Today we're embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available," said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager for the Palm Global Business Unit at HP.
During Wednesday's event, Rubinstein revealed that HP plans to bring webOS to Windows PCs to increase the environment's installed base.
TechCrunch reports that HP announced its hiring of Apple veteran Richard Kerris during a developer gathering after the event. Kerris, who previously served as Senior Director for Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations group, will join HP in a similar role as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. In between working at Apple and now HP, Kerris served as the CTO of Lucasfilm for 3 years.
Kerris "held numerous positions at Apple, from managing special projects for the applications division to managing the company's technical marketing strategies for professional applications" from 2001 to 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Given that Kerris' role at Apple was to convince developers for other platforms to build their apps for OS X and assist them in the process, HP appears to have selected him in hopes of bolstering developer interest in webOS. Kerris has his work cutout for him, as webOS is the underdog in the growing mobile space.
A recent comScore report revealed that Palm lost 0.5 percent market share from the September 2010 quarter through the end of the year, leaving it with just 3.7 percent of US smartphone subscribers.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
WebOS is being narrated as this mythical mobile OS but all I see is UI eye candy and sliding cards. Spare me that bull****!
WebOS ain't nothing but HYPERCARD reinvented.
They went to the wrong company to get a guy for developer relations. To be fair, Microsoft are much better than Apple at this.
To be honest, I'd say I tend to agree more with Apple's approach to the Mac developer community.
Their approach has been basically:
"Here is what you can see of Mac OS X - we won't tell you it all, nor give you all the control you want, but we will give you what you need to get the job done."
This competes with Microsoft, who give away everything to their developer community, and are slaves to it. Microsoft are very much a group of developers. They empathise with their non-microsoft friends and give developers what they want.
Microsoft's approach is very developer-friendly. They compromise on user experience because they are trying to placate developers' every whim and don't stop to consider how it could negatively impact the user when a developer does something stupid that a user doesn't like.
Apple reserves the right to protect large amounts of the system from developers. Developers can get frustrated at the limitations but working through them is a system that has provided Mac OS X some of the most impressive applications available on any OS.
The question realistically is "who are we making the OS for: the end users or the developers." Apple sided decidedly with the users and developers must concede control to Apple on the Mac. Microsoft, however, has a lot more trouble answering this question. And that isn't a good thing.
I never saw that written anywhere
When did they say they would bring web OS to WINDOWS PC's?
I never saw that written anywhere
Aha, two questions written as one.
I have been insulted on this site and the moderators don't give a stuff.
These people who insult should be banned, instead I am being ignored or belittled.
If these moderators cannot do their job properly, I think they should step down.
Come one ban me, this will be just like censorship, because you don't like criticism right.
Oh please, grow up. And put a sock in it!!!!!!!
Capable Individual to push HP over the Top and Compete with Apple Inc.
Watson?
Who is any former Apple Executive?
If this guy got developers on board with no help from the phone itself, then he must be the greatest salesman in the world. I bet he could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in a wedding dress.
I tend to agree. Kerris left just before the introduction of the iPhone. All the developers didn't come till afterwards. Worked at Lucasfilm, a place where everyone wants to work at. Seems that his experience at attracting developers is somewhat untested so I wish them luck.
Aloha... I have known Richard personally for a good 25+ years. He did not leave Apple before the introduction of the iPhone. In fact, while he was at Apple he and I had significant discussions about opening it up for 3rd party developers (back when Jobs was against it), and I even convinced him to jailbreak his iPhone to see what else was available.
Other than Lucas, where he did not work with developers, his job has often been working with developers (SGI, Maya at Autodesk, etc). As a developer he seeded me with one of the original pre-production SGI Indigos, way before they were announced (ah, those were the days).
He is a great enabler and will do a great job bringing developers to the table.
I applaud HP's desire to give Redmond a challenge in the OS space. Several insiders I talked to chafe a lot about Windows licensing and restrictions and HP I think desperately wants to have more freedom for their products than they currently enjoy, and this may be the route they decide to take. If porting WebOS across their product line works (and is successful in the marketplace) it will give Microsoft the impetus they need to wake up and radically alter their Windows development - not a bad thing. With both WebOS and ChromeOS poised to move into the paradigm shift for computing in the 21st century, Microsoft will be required to revisit their business model to remain dominant.
The article says "n between working at Apple and now HP, Kerris served as the CTO of Lucasfilm for 3 years" Three years ago today the iphone 2.0 SDK wasn't even announced to the public. I doubt he has any significant work with apple IOS platform developers to matter
As an Apple iOS developer, and someone that knows Richard personally, I can say that he knows a good number of iOS developers. He is not a coder himself, but he is certainly familiar with iOS and the frameworks.
Aloha
I have been insulted on this site and the moderators don't give a stuff.
These people who insult should be banned, instead I am being ignored or belittled.
If these moderators cannot do their job properly, I think they should step down.
Come one ban me, this will be just like censorship, because you don't like criticism right.
Don't be so upset White_Rabbit. Sometimes things get rough here. You are not the only one. I am even sure nothing that was said is to be taken personally. And indeed people get banned if it's getting too ugly. So be nice now and try to relax a little. Tomorrow the sun shines again.
The AI community has welcomed all into their community. Members here only ignore people who have nothing to add to the topic or those who try to take over a thread with their opinions. Be part of the community and you'll be accepted and respected too.
I have been insulted on this site and the moderators don't give a stuff.
These people who insult should be banned, instead I am being ignored or belittled.
If these moderators cannot do their job properly, I think they should step down.
Come one ban me, this will be just like censorship, because you don't like criticism right.