Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) over the years, innovation has been the key to iPhone's success, but judging from iPhone 14 this year, Apple also seems to be squeezing toothpaste. The new phone is not only upgraded slightly, but also leaves the latest features to the more expensive Pro model.

Behind this, Apple has been unable to find a design director like legendary designer Jony Ive. The turnover is reported to have hindered Apple's efforts to change the head of product design, resulting in a lack of a helm for the company's famous design team. For Apple, the design team is the key to the company's long-term success.

▲ Cook and Apple legendary designer Ivy hard to find a successor who has been in charge of hardware design for only three years since Ivy left in 2019. For now, Apple's design department is still in the shadow of Ivy, which needs a new leader, but lacks obvious candidates. Last year, more than 3/4 of Apple's nearly $400 billion in revenue came from hardware, but the fate of the division hangs in the balance.

Evans Hankey, who has been director of industrial design since Ivy left, informed Apple last month that she was leaving. Although Hankey has worked at the company for about 20 years, she has been the head of the industrial design team for a relatively short time, which makes it difficult for her to establish a clear vision for the new product. Apple also lacks a clear succession plan, which is a big problem for a company that mainly relies on appearance to sell high-priced products.

To some extent, Apple's design department has been in a state of turmoil since Steve Steve Jobs died more than a decade ago, according to a person familiar with the matter who left Apple's head of industrial design at ▲. The partnership between Jobs and Ivy helped Apple build a clean, simple aesthetics, which is still the hallmark of the tech giant. However, Apple's growing emphasis on cost and other disruptive factors have created new difficulties for Apple's design department, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fifteen designers have left in the past few years, and Apple's design team has lost most of the senior designers who once worked under Ivy, many of them to Ivy's new company, LoveFrom. This makes it harder for Apple to find a successor to Hankey, according to people familiar with the matter. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple's design brain drain began when Ivy took a part-time job, after the chief design officer, around the launch of Apple's Apple Watch Watch in 2015. That year, Ivy's longtime deputy, Danny Koster, moved to GoPro, a sports camera company. Two years later, another of his senior lieutenants, Christopher Stringer, left to start Syng, a maker of high-end speakers.

▲ Ivy's company poached a lot of Apple designers in early 2019, and another group of Apple designers left. Apple's main designers Rick Zekendorf (Rico Zorkendorfer), Julian Horn (Julian Hoenig), Mikrou Silvanto (Miklu Silvanto) and Danielle Druelis (Daniele De Iuliis) left. In June of that year, Apple announced that Ivy would leave to set up LoveFrom design consulting company to work with Ferrari, Airbnb, Moncler and other brands.

Ivy has left at least 15 of Apple's core senior design team since 2015. Hankey will leave Apple next spring. He has no plans to join Ivy's LoveFrom at this time, according to people familiar with the matter.

The turbulence of the toothpaste upgrade design team may affect iPhone to some extent. In terms of hardware design, this year's iPhone 14 has not changed much compared with the previous generation, and the biggest bright spot, Smart Island, also benefits from the cooperation of software.

In the face of lack of innovation, Apple began to further distinguish between the basic version and the Pro model, giving the latest chip and Smart Island to the Pro series. As a result, consumers rushed to buy the Pro model, and the basic version sales fell short of expectations. Foxconn even began to dismantle the basic version production line and switch to the Pro series. Apple's new large-size iPhone 14 Plus, launched this year, was expected to be a hit, but demand was poor because of weak upgrades.

The design of ▲ iPhone 14 has not changed much. For next year's iPhone 15, Apple is expected to continue to squeeze toothpaste upgrades and put more new materials on Pro models. Apple will even focus on the name, renaming the most high-end model to iPhone 15 Ultra.

Who will take the helm of Apple Design? At first, Apple is likely to find a new visionary leader from within, but it will not be easy to find the next Ivy or even Hankey. After Ivy left, Hankey made sense as his replacement because she worked closely with Ivy as a long-term engineering manager and design director.

At present, Apple has only a small number of senior industrial designers from the Ivy era, including Duncan Kerr, Bart Andre, Richard Howarth, Peter Russell-Clark and Ben Shaffer.

Apple may find a replacement for Hankey among these people, but this strategy has never worked in the past. Howarth briefly served as head of industrial design from 2015 to 2017, but it was difficult for him to manage his former peers. Still, people close to the department believe he is the only senior member of Apple's design department who is likely to lead the team.

A person familiar with ▲ Apple's design studio said Howarth would be a natural choice for Apple. The Apple design team is now made up of many lower-level designers, and Ivy is no longer part of it. In the past, Ivy's involvement made it difficult for Haworth to implement new ideas. However, people familiar with the matter and others questioned whether Howworth wanted the job and how long he would stay at Apple. He and Andre are the two longest-serving members of the design team. Howarth has worked at Apple for 26 years and Andre for 30 years.

Apple may also consider appointing Alan Alan Dye, head of software design, to oversee hardware design, but people familiar with the team said his appointment would annoy hardware designers. Apple may also bring back a former designer, some of whom may be qualified to manage the team after holding management positions at other companies.

Another possibility is to poach from competitors. Google and Microsoft have improved their product designs, led by executives such as Ivy Ross, Google's design director, and Ralf Groene, Surface's head of design. However, Apple has struggled to integrate rival executives into leadership positions. "this person has to be someone inside Apple." Senior members of Apple's design team pointed out that poaching from other companies would lead to "the death of the team".

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