Apple’s Mansfield Unretiring; Riccio, Federighi Promoted

Bob Mansfield (pictured), Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) former senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, isn’t retiring after all (as announced in June) but instead will remain with the company in an unspecified capacity to work on future products, reporting to CEO Tim Cook, according to the company.

Two other Apple vice presidents, Craig Federighi, in Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, in Hardware Engineering, have added “senior” to their titles, now also report to Cook, and will be seated on the company’s executive management team. Riccio had been transitioning into Mansfield’s former role since the latter signaled his intention to retire.

What’s the upshot of Mansfield’s staying on? Plenty. Saving Mansfield from the perils of retirement is quite a coup for Apple. He’s been with Apple since 1999, in charge of Mac engineering since 2005 and, in 2010, he took command of iPhone engineering.

In late June, when Apple disclosed that Mansfield’s days at the company were numbered, many termed it a significant loss of one of the key drivers of the iPhone, iPad and Mac product lines. At that time, as the stretch run approached for the long-awaited debuts of the iPhone 5 and rumored iPad Mini, his planned departure must have prompted a shudder or two. Moreover, with Apple’s IT persona as a market maker and not a market follower, the importance of retaining key execs can’t be overstated.

Riccio now has Mansfield’s former job, heading up the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod engineering teams. With the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini announcements said to be right around the corner, Riccio likely will move more into the spotlight. In particular, Apple credits him with a key role in iPad product development and as an overall key contributor to its hardware portfolio.

Federighi will retain ownership of Mac OS X and the vendor’s common operating system engineering teams. He returned to Apple three years ago after a 10-year stint at Ariba and a turn at NeXT.