Apple Hardware Division Undergoes Major Reorganization as Johny Srouji Aligns Silicon Development with Product Design Teams for Future Device Engineering
With the pending executive reshuffle with John Ternus set to become the next CEO of Apple beginning in September replacing the outgoing 15 year incumbent Tim Cook who will move into the role of executive chairman senior vice president of hardware technologies at Apple, Johny Srouji, is undertaking a broad re organization of his division. According to a new report from the Commercial Times in Taiwan, this overhaul will bring the company's custom silicon development teams closer to its physical product teams to quicken development cycles of the next generation of consumer gadgets.
The biggest changes that occur during this reorganization will be in product design. Kate Bergeron, the current head of product design, will move out of that role to manage all of Apple's device product reliability, a role previously held by Tom Marieb who only recently moved to senior vice president of hardware engineering (replacing Ternus). With the change, two seasoned deputies, Shelly Goldberg and Dave Pakula, will now co lead the product design team, managing the Mac as well as the iPad, Apple Watch, and Airpods product design sections, respectively, while Richard Dinh will continue to run iPhone product design independently.
It's important to note that this organization's product design team is separate from its industrial design team; while the latter focuses on an aesthetic, visual appearance and operates directly under the chief executive, the former, the product design team, focuses on the engineering and manufacturing capabilities necessary to ramp up a product for mass production.
Meanwhile, Srouji is expanding the duties of his top engineering managers as part of his overall goal of optimizing device performance. Head of silicon engineering, Sribalan Santhanam, will now manage his silicon team in Israel along with the analog mixed signal technology and packaging teams, which are the cornerstone of device hardware power management. His counterpart, director of advanced technologies group, Zongjian Chen, will now incorporate several other hardware development departments under his direction. These include the battery prototyping, camera, sensor software, and display engineering departments; additionally, Chen will oversee the continued development of Apple's non invasive blood glucose sensor that was previously under platform architecture director, Tim Millet.
Reporting directly to Srouji for certain hardware ventures, Matt Costello, formerly head of the home and audio team, will lead a new group entitled Ecosystems Platforms and Partnerships team, and while robotics initiative lead, Kevin Lynch will keep his current position, he will now report directly to Srouji rather than through a separated section of his division, reflecting an overall shift to bring custom silicon more closely in line with physical device development at the start of a new executive era.
