Is $AAPL’s Design Team On the Way Out ?

“Given Apple’s commitment to secrecy, it’s hard to get a good sense of what is going on inside the company.

But in the opinion of one respected industry observer, Paul Kedrosky, some of Apple’s recent missteps can tell us a lot about that.

In an interview with Bloomberg West yesterday, Kedrosky said Apple’s inability to meet demand for its new iMacs–a problem that contributed to disappointing Mac sales in Q4–as well as its cancellation of many iPhone component orders, mean that one of Apple’s key competitive advantages may be disappearing.

Kedrosky believes that Apple’s iMac problems reveal an important change in the power balance within the company.

Specifically, Kedrosky thinks that, in the power-vacuum following Steve Jobs’ death, the design team, led by Jony Ive, have been given too much latitude–such that Apple is now designing products that it is not capable of manufacturing as smoothly and quickly as it needs to to meet demand….”

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