Apple’s loss is another company’s gain: Pablo Calamera, director of MobileMe, has been hired as Chief Technology Officer by the music and ringtone site Thumbplay.
Calamera was a ten-year veteran at Apple who helped oversee the .Mac service as well as the development and expansion of MobileMe starting in 2006. Apple’s subscription-based online service had a rocky launch in 2008, but later righted itself and won followers.
Before coming to Apple, Calamera spent six years at the mobile services company Danger and two at WebTV; both companies were later acquired by Microsoft.
In a statement, Thumbplay CEO Evan Schwartz touted Calamera’s breadth of expertise in cloud-based services. The company—best known for its ringtones until now—has also just announced the beta launch of Thumbplay Music, a streaming service that offers unlimited, on-demand access to its entire music library for $10 per month. The Thumbplay Music app is currently available for Blackberry phones, and will debut on the iPhone within the first quarter of this year. No doubt the new CTO will be intimately involved in the new music venture.