Following two high-rank position resignations at Nokia, Ari Jaaksi also left his post as head of MeeGo division. He said it was due to “personal reasons” but seems like he actually has something compelling enough to make him leave the company. He’s been hired as senior vice president of webOS at HP’s Palm. Now this sounds more like the real reason.

Ari will start in November, subsequent to Palm’s relocation to the Bay Area.  He will act as the leader of Palm’s webOS engineering team, an area where he’s able to add value, given his recent experience with Nokia’s MeeGo project.

But Ari Jaaksi is not the only prominent manpower HP has hired, they also have Victoria Coleman, for head of Samsung’s R&D Center in San Jose. She will supervise platform and application development for next-generation versions of webOS.

These hires are the latest in a growing line of poached Nokia employees, further signifying the sentiment around Nokia’s ability to manage this highly competitive mobile market.  Yet Nokia still has a great deal of interest in MeeGo.  The company is forging ahead with the mobile platform’s development, even pushing ahead of schedule for some early releases this year.