Bob Mansfield is leaving his role as Senior VP of Technologies at Apple, but will remain at the company to work on special projects reporting to Tim Cook.
Rumors first started flying about Mansfield’s movements when his biography disappeared from Apple’s executive roster on its website. The company has not yet issued an official statement, but confirmed to Reuters that Mansfield is moving on. We’ve emailed Apple for more information.
Apple says Bob Mansfield is no longer on Apple’s exec team but will remain at Apple working on special projects reporting to Cook. $AAPL
— Poornima Gupta (@PoornimaGupta) July 29, 2013
Apple announced in June 2012 that Mansfield, who joined the company in 1998, was planning to retire from his position as senior VP of hardware engineering. Mansfield changed his mind two months later, however, and stayed on at the company as its senior VP of technologies. At the time, it was reported that Mansfield had decided to stay after iOS software lead Scott Forstall left.
If Mansfield had followed through on his original decision to leave the company, it would have marked a major departure for Apple. Mansfield led the hardware engineering of some of Apple’s most profitable devices, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac.