Fortune has put together another list of names they want to recognize for excellence, and this time it was the smartest people in the technology industry. Executive Vice President of HP’s Personal Systems Group, and Palm chief Jon Rubinstein’s immediate supervisor, Todd Bradley grabbed the title of Smartest Executive on Fortune’s list (smartest exec is not to be confused with smartest CEO, a title unsurprisingly claimed by Apple chief Steve Jobs).

Bradley is a familiar name to Palm fans, as he was CEO of PalmOne (the hardware arm of Palm) from 2001 to 2005 during the transition to the smartphone, at which point he was recruited by Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd to head up the Personal Systems Group of HP. Since taking charge of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley has taken the desktops, laptops, and mobile devices arm of HP to new heights. They’ve toppled Dell as the world’s largest and jumped to $42 billion in annual revenue with a 300% increase in profit.

Reading the tea leaves, Bradley sees the future of HP and the Personal Systems Group in the mobile ecosystem. As such, it’s ironic and humorous that as the head of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley will once again be in charge of newly-acquired subsidiary Palm, Inc.

Bradley finds himself on the list with such tech luminaries as the aforementioned Steve Jobs, Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple designed Jonathan Ive, analyst Mike Arrington, and film-maker James Cameron (for his pioneering 3D cinema work).

Source: Fortune, Via: webOSroundup

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse sat down at the Fortune-sponsored Brainstorm: Tech conference in Pasadena, California this week to talk about the future of mobile computing. And of course, the Palm Pre came up (would we be talking about it if it didn’t?). On the device, Hesse said that the launch was a success, but sales numbers were until recently very constrained by supply issues, not a lack of demand. And because of the initial limited launch, it’s going to take a while before they can declare the Pre a smash hit or not: “You won't know if we have a real hit on our hands until its been out three months, four months, five months ... It's too early to tell.”

Hesse also took up the defensive against claims of inordinately high return rates, taking the analysts to task for their speculation, “Most of the speculation I read is wrong.”

Lastly, there’s that other Linux-based mobile phone operating system: Android. Hesse commented that Android was not ready for prime time when it was released, and it’s taken to the latest 1.5 iteration and HTC’s fancy new UI for it to be up to snuff for Sprint. At least one new Android model will land on Sprint this year.

[via: CNET and Reuters]