You probably recognize the name Todd Bradley from the headlines lately, especially if you're a fan of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Seeing him on screen with his wife Bronwyn Newport is one thing, but for those of us who lived through the "gadget wars" of the early 2000s, he’s a much more significant figure than just a reality TV husband. He was the guy holding the steering wheel at Palm when the world was pivoting from clunky plastic organizers to the pocket computers we can’t live without today.
Honestly, the Palm Pilot era was wild. Before the iPhone made everyone a techie, having a Palm was the ultimate status symbol for the "organized" professional. But by the time Todd Bradley stepped in as CEO of PalmOne in 2003, the company was in a weird, fractured state.
The Split and the Struggle
To understand what Bradley actually did, you have to remember that Palm wasn't just one company back then. It had split into two: PalmSource (the software people) and PalmOne (the hardware people). Bradley was the muscle behind the hardware. He took over during a period where everyone was wondering if the PDA—the Personal Digital Assistant—was basically a dead man walking.
Why? Because phones were getting smarter.
People were tired of carrying a flip phone in one pocket and a Palm Pilot in the other. They wanted one device. Bradley knew this. He wasn't just a "manager"; he was a supply chain expert who had come over from Gateway. He was brought in to fix the mess of how the devices were actually made and sold.
The Handspring Acquisition: Bradley's Big Move
If you want to point to one thing Todd Bradley got right, it was the acquisition of Handspring.
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Handspring was the company started by the original Palm founders (Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky) after they left. They were the ones who made the Treo, which was arguably the first "cool" smartphone. By bringing Handspring back into the fold, Bradley essentially saved Palm from becoming a footnote in history as a maker of digital calendars.
Under his watch, the Treo 600 and 650 became the "it" phones. They had the keyboard, the touch screen, and the cult following. Businessmen loved them. Tech nerds loved them. It felt like Palm was winning.
Then, in 2005, right as things seemed to be peaking, he just... left.
Why He Walked Away
It caught a lot of people off guard. Bradley resigned from PalmOne in early 2005. At the time, he said he had "accomplished what he set out to do."
In business speak, that usually means one of two things: either you've fixed the plumbing and you're bored, or you see a storm coming that you don't want to be around for. For Bradley, it was a bit of both. He had stabilized the supply chain and oversaw the Handspring merger. He left the company in a profitable state, which is a rare feat in the volatile world of early mobile tech.
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He didn't stay unemployed for long. Hewlett-Packard (HP) snapped him up to run their massive PC division.
The HP Connection and the WebOS Ghost
This is where the story gets a bit ironic. Years after Bradley left Palm, he was at HP when they decided to buy Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion.
Imagine that.
He was the Executive Vice President at HP when they decided to acquire his old company to get their hands on WebOS. He was very vocal about it at the time, calling WebOS a "natural platform" for HP to build on. We all know how that ended—the HP TouchPad lasted about seven weeks before being killed off—but Bradley’s fingerprints were all over the attempt to make Palm relevant again in the age of the iPad.
What Most People Get Wrong
There’s a common misconception that Bradley was the one who "failed" Palm. If you look at the timeline, it's actually the opposite. He was the one who gave them a fighting chance by pivoting to the Treo and fixing the manufacturing side of the house.
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The eventual downfall of the Palm Pilot brand had more to do with the industry moving faster than any legacy company could handle. By the time the iPhone arrived in 2007, Bradley was already busy making HP the number one PC maker in the world.
Actionable Insights for Tech History Buffs
If you're looking into Bradley's legacy or the history of mobile computing, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Study the Treo 600/650: If you want to see the height of Bradley's influence, look at these devices. They defined the "pre-iPhone" smartphone era.
- Operational Excellence over Flash: Bradley wasn't a "visionary" in the Steve Jobs sense. He was an operator. He proved that even a great product will fail if you can't manage the supply chain and retail relationships.
- Follow the Board Seats: Today, Bradley stays busy with private equity (Niobrara Capital) and various board positions. If you're curious about where he's putting his energy now, he’s heavily involved in the "operational excellence" side of the companies he advises.
The Palm Pilot might be a museum piece now, but the way Todd Bradley navigated that transition period is still a masterclass in hardware management. He took a company that was literally splitting apart and turned it into an acquisition target worth over a billion dollars. Not a bad legacy for a guy you now see arguing about high-end fashion on Bravo.
Check out old reviews of the Treo 650 on YouTube if you want a hit of nostalgia. It’s wild to see how much of that "Bradley-era" design language paved the way for the phones we use every single day.