Palm has named more members of its Solutions Group management team, including Apple veteran, Steve Manser. The Solutions Group is responsible for designing and delivering the Palm family of products.
Manser, who will lead Palm engineering for the Solutions Group management team, held key roles in Apple’s Mac engineering organization, and was once vice president of Macintosh Desktop Systems and Servers. He was a founder, chief operating officer and board member at a venture capital-funded start-up, Propel Software. Manser was also a vice president of Cadence Design Systems.
At Palm, Manser is responsible for the design, development and delivery of compelling Palm products and solutions that address the needs of consumers, mobile individual professionals and enterprises. One area of focus will be modular designs for integrated wireless devices that will address different communications infrastructures around the world.
Glenn Cross will head America’s Sales and service efforts for the Solutions Group management team. Cross has worked for Sun, Adobe, Lotus, General Magic, and Penergy.
Another Apple vet on the Solutions Group is Ken Wirt, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Solutions Group. Wirt joined Palm in July and was the founder and chief executive officer of Riffage.com, a music media company. He also was vice president of corporate marketing for Diamond Multimedia Systems, a leading PC peripherals company, where he managed all worldwide marketing functions, customer service and Internet marketing. Wirt also led the introduction of the Rio portable MP3 player, which established the MP3 market.
Before this, Wirt headed Marketing for Apple’s PIE (personal interactive electronics) division, overseeing all Newton marketing programs. He has also has held key marketing roles at NEC Technologies, Cognitive Systems and Atari. Wirt’s objectives at Palm are to improve the effectiveness of marketing Solutions Group products.
Apple alumni are also abundant in Palm’s Platform Solutions Group, which develops and licenses the Palm operating system. David Nagel is president and CEO of Palm’s new operating system subsidiary.
Nagel was most recently chief technology officer at AT&T, and has been overseeing the creation of Palm’s new OS unit. Prior to this he was a senior vice president at Apple and led its worldwide research and development group.
Also on board at the new Palm division is Steve Sakoman, who’ll serve as chief technology officer of the OS subsidiary once Palm’s purchase of Be is completed. On Aug. 16 Palm entered into a definitive agreement to buy Be’s intellectual property and technology assets for US$11 million, to be paid in common stock of Palm, which Be currently intends to liquidate as soon as reasonably practicable following the closing of the transaction.
Sakoman is Be’s chief operating officer. Prior to that, he was Apple’s director of CPU development managing the hardware group, which was responsible for the Apple II and Macintosh product lines. Sakoman also started and managed the Newton development team.
Other Apple alumni at Palm include Doug Solomon and Satjiv Chahil. Solomon, who spent 15 years at Apple, was most recently president of Interval Research — he will serve as Palm’s chief strategy officer. Chahil, Palm’s mew marketing chief, is a veteran of Apple, Sony and most recently worked at Newbridge Networks.