Jon Rubenstein – the former Palm CEO and, most recently, Hewlett-Packard (HP)’s Senior VP for product innovation for the company’s Personal Systems Group – has left HP, where he had been working ever since the April 2010 acquisition of Palm.

It was in 2007 that Rubenstein joined Palm – after having earlier worked with Apple, where he played a substantial role in developing the original iPod – and took over the reins of the company as the CEO in 2009, soon after the release of Palm’s first handset powered by its new operating system called the webOS.

When the devices running the webOS failed to make their mark in the market, even despite the rave reviews about the operating system per se, Palm signed an acquisition deal with HP.

While Rubinstein joined HP after its Palm takeover, he took the back seta in 2011 when HP named Stephen DeWitt as the head of the group which included webOS. However, after the launch of the first webOS tablet, which too failed to take off, HP decided to discontinue the production of webOS handsets as well as tablets.

And now, Rubenstein’s departure from HP marks the final blow to the company’s present round of mobile-device efforts. While HP has refrained from disclosing Rubenstein’s plans after quitting the company, an AllThingsD report
- which first announced Rubinstein’s departure from HP - has revealed that Rubenstein intends to take some time off before planning his future course of action.