As we well know, Tony Fadell, the former exec in charge of Apple’s iPod division, has stepped down for personal reasons and Apple has hired Mark Papermaster, the PowerPC chip guru in IBM’s hardware business.
We’ve been discussing the move and there are a few reasons for choosing someone from IBM to lead what is, in reality, an entertainment division. First, iPods are now essentially mini computers and devices like the iPhone and the Touch are running homegrown hardware – basically stripped down ARM chips made popular by PDAs from the turn of the century – and containing communications chips and flash memory for various suppliers. Next, you have issues with performance and battery life that only a hardcore hardware guru can attack with any intensity. The real goals, then, are for Papermaster to keep the chips flowing either through sourcing or buying out a chip company and to ensure that research and improvement is steady and, most importantly, secret.
