Apple iPhone Air Designer Departs for an AI Startup

The designer who helped create Apple’s iPhone Air has reportedly left the company.

Abidur Chowdhury, an industrial designer, recently stepped down from his role at Apple to take a job with an artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Nov. 17), citing people familiar with the matter.

Chowdhury was chosen to introduce the new iPhone Air at an event in September, starring in a video about the device’s features and design process, the report added, noting that appearing in such a video for Apple is considered a “high-profile assignment.”

According to the report, Chowdhury spent more than six years at Apple. He joined in 2019, around the same time design chief Jony Ive stepped down, ending an era that had stretched back to Steve Jobs’ time with the company.

Aside from acting as the voice behind the marketing effort, Chowdhury played a major role in developing the iPhone Air. The report says his departure is not connected to the debut of the phone, which has seen its design praised even as sales have been underwhelming. A new model is planned for 2027, Bloomberg reported recently.

PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

News of Chowdhury’s departure follows a recent report that Apple was setting the groundwork for longtime CEO Tim Cook’s departure.

Apple’s market capitalization surpassed $4 trillion last month, fueled in part by greater-than-expected demand for the new iPhone 17. The tech giant became the third public company to hit that milestone, with Nvidia and Microsoft both topping the $4 trillion mark in July.

In other Apple news, PYMNTS wrote last week about a notable change in the company’s App Store strategy, which could set a standard for how mobile software is developed and monetized.

The company has introduced a program that halves the standard 30% fee it takes from app developers on in-app sales for a type of software called “mini apps.” This program gives developers of mini apps — which run inside other standalone apps instead of as separate downloads — a reduced commission rate of 15% in exchange for using Apple’s technology to create their apps.

“This could change how people use their phones,” PYMNTS wrote. “Instead of having multiple apps scattered across the phone, users might have just a few traditional apps that include many mini apps. This can make phones less cluttered and give users more features in fewer places.”