HP Hires Former Apple WWDC Boss

HP has quietly hired Richard Kerris as its new vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. Mr. Kerris previously worked at Apple as the senior director for the company’s World Wide Developer Relations program, but most recently served as CTO at Lucasfilm.

Word of Mr. Kerris’s new position first surfaced thanks to The Loop, and was later confirmed by MobileCrunch.

During his time at Apple, Mr. Kerris also worked on the the iLife suite, along with the Final Cut Pro and Logic development teams.

Mr. Kerris’s experience will come in handy at HP since he’ll be involved in helping promote relationships with webOS developers. webOS came under HP’s wing when the company bought Palm, and also gained Jon Rubinstein — another former Apple executive.

HP will most likely keep Mr. Kerris busy since the company just announced several new webOS-based devices, including the TouchPad tablet that’s due out some time later this year.