Mark Gurman from Bloomberg reports that Abidur Chowdhury, a designer who presented the iPhone Air in September during the Apple event, has parted ways with Apple to join a startup company for AI. The move made headlines inside Apple because he was the design team’s rising star.
Chowdhury contributed to work on the iPhone Air and described the features in a two-minute presentation last September. The designer parting ways with Apple is not associated with the underwhelming sales of the iPhone Air nor is it related to the device.
Abidur Chowdhury joined the industrial design team of Apple in 2019. This is the same year Jony Ive parted ways with Apple to form a new design team, whereas other members left to join Ive or other companies.
Apple has lost multiple designers with a high-profile in the span of the last six years. The team will be directly reporting to Tim Cook as the chief operations at Apple. Jeff Williams who supervised the design team has recently retired.
