Three weeks into his new job at HP (NYSE: HPQ), Todd Achilles was pulled into the $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, which was struggling to gain traction as its cash reserves dwindled. As Hewlett-Packard’s VP of Telco Sales, Achilles is now running a combined sales team of HP and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) employees for the Americas.
The daunting task is similar to the one Achilles took on five years ago for HTC, the little-known Taiwanese handset maker trying to gain recognition as the major manufacturer of Windows Mobile phones. Achilles headed up HTC’s Americas office in Bellevue, Wash. and oversaw the release of some of the most cutting edge smartphones of its time. Examples included the sleek Cingular 3125, nicknamed STRTRK, and the T-Mobile Dash. Achilles left HTC in September 2007, citing a hectic traveling schedule, when the company was gearing up to release the first Google (NSDQ: GOOG) phone.
Achilles has now been on the job at HP for five months. Between jobs, Achilles spent time sitting on boards, including City Year AmeriCorps organization, and consulting with startups (He also stood in line to be one of the first to own a Palm Pre!). Before that, he was executive director at T-Mobile USA, working on the company’s handset strategy.
Since HP has purchased Palm, the handset and OS-maker has lost most of the momentum it had gained and has suffered from some high-level departures.
Dash was a bar, not a slider…
Avi, you are right! What was I thinking of? The 3125, or something with a generic name? The Dash is the BlackBerry wannabe!