Palm CEO Yankowski Resigns

Palm Inc. [NASDAQ:PALM] is splitting into two companies, so today Palm CEO Carl Yankowski said he is splitting.

Eric Benhamou, Palm's chairman of the board, temporarily will replace Yankowski until a new CEO is found, the company said. Benhamou will chair an executive council that includes other top Palm officers. The council will run the company and lead the search for a new CEO.

Palm currently segments itself into two "business groups" - the "solutions group" and the "platform solutions group." The former designs Palm handheld products, while the latter develops the Palm operating system and licenses it to other companies.

According to the company, by the end of this year, the platform solutions group will become an internal subsidiary of Palm.

"With Palm's transition into two individual businesses almost complete, my role has changed, and it no longer matches my aspirations," Yankowski said in a prepared statement.

"It has been an honor to lead Palm," he added.

The company said Yankowski did not disclose his future plans.

In a prepared statement, Benhamou thanked Yankowski for his "industry vision," and for "setting the stage" for Palm's future.

In January, Yankowski gave one of the keynote addresses at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He said Palm closed deals at the trade show with Ingenico, VeriFone and Visa to turn a handheld into an e-wallet.

Yankowski said credit card information would be encoded into a Palm handheld, where it could be "beamed" to a specially designed register, along with a PIN, to make a purchase. He predicted the "point and pay" technology would be ready by Christmas.

www.palm.com

--Reported By Michael Bartlett, Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .