HTC’s executive director for Europe, Paul Ghent, has left the company to join Palm as sales vice president for Europe, the Middle East
and Africa.
It comes as Palm launched its ‘Pre’ smartphone in a bid to take on Apple, HTC, BlackBerry and Nokia in the consumer smartphone market. Palm has been hatching plans to move beyond its ‘techy’ handheld IT professional devices with a consumer push in recent months.
No permanent replacement for Ghent has been announced yet, but HTC’s Dave Catt will take on Ghent’s duties in the short term.
Ghent was responsible for bringing HTC into the consumer market last year with devices like the Touch and Touch Diamond, as well as signing a deal with Brightpoint UK as an exclusive UK distributor.
HTC’s share of the global market doubled in 2008, after the manufacturer made the decision to move beyond making white label devices under operator brands to branching out with products under its own marque.
The Pre is a touch-screen device with GPS, Wi-Fi and a slide-out full keyboard. No UK release date has yet been set.
While still at HTC, Ghent told Mobile in September 2008: ‘We are really getting into the consumer market. Historically, we have concentrated on the business arena with Windows Mobile devices, but since we started focusing on building our own brand, we have come out with phones that appeal to prosumers and ultimately to consumers.’