Apple Confirms Retirement of Senior Designer Greg Christie Later This Year

Apple has confirmed the departure of Greg Christie, part of the original team behind the iPhone. His leaving the company was previously reported by 9to5Mac and was said to follow a falling out between Christie and Jony Ive, Apple’s design chief.

The WSJ reports that Christie’s “human interface” team will now report to Jonathan Ive, rather than the company’s software head Craig Federighi.

In a statement given to the Financial Times, Apple says that Christie has been planning to retire later this year and is still within the company.

Greg has been planning to retire later this year after nearly 20 years at Apple. He has made vital contributions to Apple products across the board, and built a world-class Human Interface team which has worked closely with Jony for many years.

Christie has worked with Apple since 1996 and was credited with the development of the “Slide to Unlock” feature of iPhones and iPads, though he is named as an inventor on hundreds of other patents.

New York Times reporter Brian X. Chen tweeted that Christie’s retirement was announced within the company “weeks ago”.

Was just told Apple VP Greg Christie's retirement was announced weeks ago. I don't know anything about Ive politics.

— Brian X. Chen (@bxchen) April 9, 2014

Apple’s statement doesn’t directly address the rumor that Greg Christie and Jony Ive had clashed over design direction, nor does the company specify his current role.

Apple Seeds OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 Build 13D38 to Developers [Mac Blog]

Apple today seeded build 13D38 of OS X 10.9.3 to developers, just under a week after releasing the fifth OS X beta, build 13D33, and a little over a month after the first 10.9.3 beta.

The beta is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store as well as through the Mac Dev Center.

Apple continues to ask developers to focus on Graphics Drivers, Audio, Mail, Contacts and Calendar sync over USB in iTunes, and Safari. As was discovered with the first beta, 10.9.3 adds new support for 4K displays, offering “Retina” resolutions that improve readability along with support for 60Hz output from the Retina MacBook Pro.

U.S. Mac Sales Fall in Winter Quarter, Global PC Market Sees Continued Sales Falloff [Mac Blog]

Apple saw a year-over-year drop of 3.8% in U.S. market share according to a report released today by Gartner, with Dell and Lenovo capturing significant growth at the expense of the rest of the market. The U.S. PC market saw a small increase in total units shipped, while internationally the PC market contracted by 1.7 percent.

In the U.S. market, PC shipments totaled 14.1 million units in the first quarter of 2014, a 2.1 percent increase from the same period last year (see Table 2). HP maintained the No. 1 position, as it accounted for 25 percent of PC shipments in the U.S. market. Dell and Lenovo experienced the strongest growth among the top five vendors, with growth rates of 13.2 and 16.8 percent.

“In terms of the major structural shift of the PC market, the U.S. market is ahead of other regions,” Ms. Kitagawa said. “The installed base of PCs started declining in 2013, while the worldwide installed base still grew. The U.S. PC market has been highly saturated with devices: 99 percent of households own at least one or more desktops or laptops, and more than half of them own both. While tablet penetration is expected to reach 50 percent in 2014, some consumer spending could return to PCs.”

The overall international PC market fared worse than the U.S., a reversal of last quarter as tablets continue to eat into PC sales. Internationally, Lenovo, Dell, Asus and HP all saw solid market share growth at the expense of Acer and the rest of the market. Gartner considers PCs to include desktop and notebooks, including x86 tablets equipped with Windows 8, but excluding Chromebooks and other tablets like the iPad.

The data is preliminary, meaning Gartner can revise its numbers based on market conditions. Last year the firm revised its preliminary Apple numbers by more than two share points because the newly introduced iMac was in extremely short supply.

Separately, IDC reported similar overall trends, with Apple seeing its U.S. PC market share dropping to 10.3%, down from 11% last year. Globally, the firm saw the PC market shrink by 4.4 percent.

Apple has not updated any of its Mac products since early last fall.

Apple Expanding Marketing Efforts with New Ad Agencies to Battle Samsung Threat

Apple is planning to expand and improve marketing efforts by partnering with four new digital ad agencies, including WPP’s AKQA, Interpublic Group’s Huge, Area 17, and Kettle, reports Ad Age. The agencies will work on digital strategy and user experience, among other things.

The scope of the work being assigned across the agencies is broad, and will likely include user experience and digital strategy, among other elements, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to Ad Age, Apple’s new partnerships will not affect existing relationships, such as that with TBWA/Media Arts Lab. Apple’s longtime advertising partner was recently in the spotlight after the Apple vs. Samsung trial surfaced a heated email correspondence between the agency and Apple’s head of marketing Phil Schiller.

Apple and Schiller were unhappy with the TBWA’s early 2013 advertising efforts, but those relationship wrinkles were apparently ironed out as Apple has continued to work with the agency, producing the successful “Photos Every Day” and “Music Every Day” advertisements in late 2013.

Apple also works with several other digital shops and in 2013, the company began working on doubling the size of its in-house creative design team, likely as a response to increased pressure from Samsung. Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing” advertising campaign reportedly infuriated Apple executives, leading to its troubles with its own advertising agencies.

According to a recent report, Apple spent $351 million on advertising in the U.S. in 2013, while Samsung spent $363 million. In years past, Samsung has far outspent Apple on advertisements, but that gap appears to have narrowed as Apple has made moves to improve its marketing campaigns.