Former AT&T Corp. executive David Nagel has joined Palm Inc. as president
and CEO of its newly formed operating-system division.
Nagel, who has been a Palm board member since February 2000, most recently
was chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs. He will assume his
new post Sept. 17.
In his new role, Nagel will spearhead efforts to improve the capabilities of
Palm's handheld-computer platform, which has endured tough competition from
Microsoft Corp.'s 'PocketPC' line.
Palm's plan is to create two independent companies: one to handle software
development and licensing, and the other to handle hardware. The software
division is expected to spin out and operate as an independent, wholly owned
Palm subsidiary before the end of the year, the company said.
Nagel's group will target expansion into new areas such as wireless
communications and more robust multimedia applications.
Before joining AT&T, Nagel was senior vice president at Apple Computer
Inc., responsible for Macintosh OS software, hardware and peripherals.
In connection with the cable industry, Nagel also has board duties with
Liberate Technologies and RespondTV Inc.
In related news, AT&T named Hossein Eslambolchi CTO and president of
AT&T Labs, responsible for heading up the engineering behind the company's
Internet-protocol and packet networks. Eslambolchi, who previously was AT&T
Labs' vice president of data and Internet-network services, succeeds Nagel.
For a six-month stint that began in February, Eslambolchi served as
Excite@Home Corp.'s interim president of broadband networks. Essentially on loan
during that time, he was brought on to help the high-speeder scale its broadband
network, which had come under fire for various service and electronic-mail
outages.
Chris Hjelm, a former executive at Federal Express Corp., is currently
Excite@Home's executive vice president of broadband-network
services.
