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Rubinstein takes a Dive in SF
On Monday and Tuesday this week, the D: Dive Into Mobile was held at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. This conference is the very first brand extension of the highly influential D: All Things Digital conference, founded by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
While D: All Things Digital conference takes a big picture view of the broader digital landscape, D: Dive Into Mobile drills down to the innovations influencing the mobile space in the near-term, and the implications over the next year to 18 months.
Among the scheduled speakers was Jon Rubinstein of HP-Palm. Here's a link to the write-up by Digital Daily's John Paczkowski. His post also includes a video clip.
Here are some excerpts:
Regarding Palm and its ultimate acquisition by HP, Rubinstein said:
I think we did have many of the elements to be successful. We had a great team, a great product, a great product pipeline... But I think the market moved too fast and when we looked forward we saw a very clear way to where we could get the company to profitability, but we didn't see a way to get it to scale... We could have been a small, successful company, but I don't think that's long-term sustainable in this business.
Rubinstein's view on the competitive environment:
Look, this is a huge market. The growth is phenomenal. If we roll back three years to when I started this Palm adventure, mobile was the place to be. And it still is today. I think we still have the chance to become a major player if we do the right things.
On what's the more important device, the phone or the tablet?
Rubinstein says he doesn't think people will have just one device. "It used to be that people shared a device. These days, people have multiple devices. So the new question is how do these devices interact so there's a seamless user experience across devices... The ability to have a unified experience on all your devices is very important."
The unified theme is heard again. Hopefully we'll see something soon that takes webOS to the next level.
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