HP and Samsung’s mobile teams both saw major leadership changes over the past 48 hours.
According to Samsung, Omar Khan, the company’s long-time chief technology officer and the man responsible for trotting out new products at events like the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), will be leaving the company.
Khan, a long-time Android evangelist at Samsung, will take the position as Citibank’s mobile analyst leader. In a statement provided to Wireless Week, Samsung said it plans on having a continued relationship with Khan once he settles into his new role at Citibank.
Khan came to Samsung in 2008 from Motorola, where he was vice president of global supply chain & business operations for mobile devices. At Samsung, he is credited with the production of devices such as the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Samsung said Tim Rowden will be assuming Khan’s previous duties, and Nick Dicarlo and Gavin Kim will be assuming most of the product and service spokesperson responsibilities for Samsung Mobile.
Meanwhile, HP’s webOS team is also ushering in some changes. The company yesterday reported that Stephen DeWitt has been appointed to the post of senior vice president and general manager of its webOS global business unit.
Jon Rubinstein, the visionary behind webOS who came to the company as part of its acquisition of Palm and who has been the main lead on webOS, will step aside, assuming a product innovation role within the Personal Systems Group at HP.
“With the successful debut of our first wave of webOS-based products, we are drawing on our deep executive bench to position the right leaders in the right roles to accelerate the long-term growth of webOS,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, and member of the executive board at HP, in a statement.
Specifically, Rubinstein was named senior vice president for product innovation in the Personal Systems Group. He will continue to report to Bradley in this role.
“With the launch of webOS 3.0, our team has delivered a world-class platform for HP to leverage going forward, and it is now time to take things to the next level,” said Rubinstein in a statement.
