Some Apple executives have been assigned new responsibilities, Bob Mansfield will focus on chips instead

After Bob Mansfield’s departure from Apple’s leadership team, the responsibilities of some executives have been revised.

Following the departure of Mansfield, former Senior Vice President of Technologies, the “special projects” section was split between two Senior VPs: Dan Riccio, Chief Hardware and Jeff Williams, Chief Operations.

Dan Riccio will now be responsible for overseeing the design of antennas for Apple’s mobile devices, as well as hardware engineering for the WiFi components of all Apple products.

In addition to Senior Vice President of Technologies, Mansfield was also responsible for special projects for Apple’s engineering team. In his new role, the sources say, Mansfield will continue to contribute to special projects (such as the iWatch) and Jeff Williams will help oversee the management of these groups.

With Riccio in charge of the antenna design and general hardware engineering of all products, the components will be designed under one roof, rather than being split between the two teams.

Perhaps, Williams’ contribution to special projects will be key to the future production of these products, Williams is the executive charged with insuring Apple’s suppliers and factory partners to build Apple products under compliance.

Mansfield’s new role will actually be fulfilling, especially for what Cook reported:

“Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, combining our wireless teams from across the company into one organization, which will enable us to achieve high standards in this industry. This organization will also include all of our semiconductor teams, which have some very ambitious plans. “

With the new role, Mansfield will focus on chips, while still being able to distribute executive and management duties assigned to Hedgehog and Williams. Mansfield’s role is also logical, as Apple has a desire to move away from the Intel chips found in Macs.

Apparently, Apple has no imminent plans to appoint a new Senior Vice President of Technologies, in fact the role was created specifically for Mansfield last fall.

According to a source close to the former Technologies team, there has been a lack of formal internal communication regarding the reasoning behind the management shift.

“Mansfield really has the best interest of the whole company at heart,” says a former Apple manager.