Eric Benhamou Interview Series

Posted By: Kris Keilhack Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:54:33 AM

The Sramana Mitra blog has posted a series of interviews with Eric Benhamou Palm's former Chairman of the Board and CEO. Mr. Benhamou discusses various topics within the interview, but mostly focuses on his time as CEO of 3Com (1990 to 2000) and then the ups and downs at Palm since he joined the company upon its acquisition by 3Com in 2000. Mr. Benhamou served as Palm CEO after the resignation of Carl Yankowski in October 2001 until the appointment of Todd Bradley as Palm Inc. CEO in 2002. This permitted Benhamou to then return to his previous position as chairman of Palm’s board. Last month Palm announced that Mr. Benhamou would be stepping down from his position on Palm's board as part of several changes related to the Elevation deal.

The first part of the interview, primarily dealing with Mr. Benhamou's life history and his pre-Palm decade at the helm of 3Com can be found here. In the chat, the surprisingly critical Benhamou confesses that the current Palm management team has been slow to release breakout, compelling new products.

Eric BenhamouHe goes on to note in segment eight of the interview to note that he feels the Palm management of the past few years has been concerned with growing market share and revenue and tweaking derivative variations of the Treo 600 design (the “3M Syndrome”) instead of investing creatively to develop another revolutionary device such as the iconic Palm V and Treo 600.

Another interesting fact mentioned by Mr. Benhamou when he discusses the differing corporate culture between Palm and Handspring, saying Palm is analogous to a “biz” company like Dell and Handspring had more of an Apple-esque spirit of freedom and innovation that definitely fed through to their product line. Benhamou also feels that Palm did not overpay for Handspring and that a “fair” price was given to the cash-strapped Treo developer by Palm at the time of the merger in 2003.

Benhamou unfortunately does not get into much product-specific discussion and his comments are made mostly from a general product and business/management standpoint instead of specifics such as OS, technical specs, etc. He also does not make any reference to Palm’s Linux plans, the fate of the Foleo Mobile Phone Companion or any particular reason Palm should maintain some version of the “Palm OS”. His comments about the uncomfortable nature of an interim CEO and the high-flying days of Palm stock leading up to Palm’s 2000 IPO, make for especially compelling reading, especially for long-time followers of Palm and/or users of Palm products.

The blog author and conductor of the interview, Sramana Mitra is, in her own words, a “high-impact Entrepreneur-Executive in Silicon Valley” who also provides consulting services to a wide variety of companies in the technology industry.

Thanks, Seldom Visitor.

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Yankowski & Nagel

Gekko @ 9/19/2007 6:55:36 PM # Q

this is Benhamou's legacy.

RE: Yankowski & Nagel
Gekko @ 9/19/2007 7:03:18 PM # Q

"In another room, a few executives watched Carl Yankowski's interview on CNBC, taping it for playback at the employee meeting that was to commence in minutes. After CNBC announcers gushed over "the most talked-about IPO," the camera cut to Carl Yankowski in the Nasdaq studio. Usually a compelling public speaker, Yankowski seemed out of his element. When asked about larger screens for palmtops, he answered stiffly, "We are well positioned whichever way the market goes." As the interview came to a close, the reporter said, "I've got to ask you about your suit." Yankowski smiled. He was wearing a very special suit, he let on, designed to satisfy the public's high expectations from Palm's IPO. The shiny pinstripes woven into the otherwise standard wool suit were made from threads of pure gold. CNBC cut back to the studio anchor. "Was that for real?" he asked the correspondent. The Palm managers assembled around the TV set looked at each other. "We're not showing this video," one of the executives decreed. Then they walked out to start the employee meeting."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471089656/

Nagel said he doesn´t think Microsoft (MSFT) will become the same software leader on the mobile phone market as it is for personal computers, because it doesn´t offer an open system and people want to be able to use third party applications on their cellulars as well.

http://msmobiles.com/news.php/1467.html



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