Three veterans in charge of iPhone design resigned, causing a major personnel shakeup in Apple's industrial design team

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's industrial design team has just undergone a major personnel change, and three veteran employees who were responsible for the design of products such as the iPhone will leave. Among them, Rico Zorkendorfer and Daniele De Iuliis have recently left Apple, and another person who has worked at Apple for ten years, Julian Hönig, will also leave.

It is understood that Apple's industrial design team consists of about 20 employees, who are mainly responsible for the appearance design of Apple products. When Jobs was alive, he attached great importance to the industrial design team and visited them almost every day to learn about the design of new products. An Apple employee said, "Industrial designers have the final say on the user experience of Apple devices."

In the past decade, under the leadership of Jony Ive, few employees left the team, but in recent years, there have been more frequent departures. The three designers mentioned above have a total of nearly 50 years of work experience at Apple. In addition, designer Danny Coster left Apple in 2016 to join GoPro after working at Apple for 23 years, and Christopher Stringer left in 2017 and launched an audio startup that is currently confidential.

Industry insiders speculate that the successive departures of core employees of Apple's industrial design team are related to their business adjustments. Today, the designs of products such as the iPhone and iPad have matured, and the speed at which the design team launches important new products has slowed down. The most recent memorable products may be the AirPods launched in 2016 and the HomePod launched in 2017.

On the other hand, digital services are becoming more and more important to Apple. At last month's press conference, Apple launched new services including Apple News +, Apple Arcade, Apple Card and Apple TV +.

Under this trend, a major change in Apple's industrial design team is also an expected change.