Johny Srouji, Apple's chief hardware officer, recently conducted a major management reorganization of the hardware development department, aiming to speed up the research and development process of future devices and achieve closer integration of self-developed chips and product teams.
According to reports, Srouji is adjusting the management structure of the product design team. Jurisdiction of the function will be transferred from Kate Bergeron to her long-time deputies Shelly Goldberg and Dave Pakula. Goldberg was previously responsible for Mac product design, and Pakula led Apple Watch, iPad and AirPods product design. In the future, they will jointly oversee the design of all Apple products. Richard Dinh will continue to lead iPhone product design.
Bergeron has been newly appointed and will be responsible for product reliability oversight of all Apple devices and will continue to lead the materials development team. She will report to Tom Marieb, head of hardware engineering.
The core goal of this reorganization is to "better integrate the self-developed chip team and product creation team." With John Ternus taking over as CEO on September 1, Srouji's scope of responsibilities will further expand. He was appointed chief hardware officer in April, overseeing chips, hardware engineering and platform architecture.
Two of Ternus' former deputies will report directly to Srouji: Matt Costello will lead the new ecosystem platform and partnership team, and Kevin Lynch will lead a special projects group focused on the development of robotic devices.
In addition, Sribalan Santhanam, head of chip engineering, will oversee the Israeli chip engineering team and packaging technology; Zongjian Chen, head of advanced technology, will take over battery, camera engineering and sensor software development, and continue to promote the non-invasive blood glucose monitoring project.
Analysts believe that this series of adjustments comes at a time when Apple is facing competitive pressure in the field of AI. The restructuring is aimed at breaking down the barriers between hardware and chip teams and accelerating the implementation of AI functions in new devices.