Bono takes on his friend Steve Jobs
The First Post
December 24, 2008
Apparently not content with being a rock star and fighting world
poverty, Bono, the Irish rock star, is now behind an attempt to launch
a mobile handset aimed at blowing away Apple's iPhone. Elevation
Partners, the Silicon Valley private-equity firm the singer founded a
few years back, have just invested a further $100 million into US
company Palm, who are launching an iPhone-style competitor in January.
This does not appear to have gone down well with his old friend Steve
Jobs, Apple's iconic chief executive. He and Bono (pictured) were once
very close �?in times past, Bono said that Jobs was "more creative
than most rock bands" and even allowed him to create a U2-branded iPhone.
However, the US gossip website Gawker claims that relations between
the two men have now soured, a situation it puts down to Bono entering
the phone market. The fact that Jon Rubinstein, a hardware executive
who served as Jobs's right-hand man at Apple, is now working at Palm,
and that Fred Anderson, a former Apple CFO and board member, is now
one of Elevation's key backers, can't exactly help matters either.
Whatever the state of their friendship, the arrival of a new,
Bono-backed competitor to iPhone comes at an awkward time for Apple.
As reported here, it was announced last week that Jobs would not be
giving his usual keynote address at the annual Macworld jamboree in
January, a decision that has increased speculation about the computer
genius's health.
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