The Designer Who Introduced the iPhone Air to the World Has Left Apple, Report Says

You don’t all the time get to know the true motive somebody leaves their job—not even the man within the video beneath, Abidur Chowdhury, an Apple industrial designer who performed a “key function” in creating the iPhone Air, and acted as its spokesman when it was launched, however who has, according to Bloomberg, left Apple for an AI startup.

With that in thoughts, the Info reported somewhat over per week in the past that the iPhone Air is such a flop that Apple has delayed rolling out the subsequent mannequin. (Bloomberg’s story on Chowdhury notes {that a} second iPhone Air will nonetheless occur, however not till 2027) Gizmodo’s largely positive review of the gadget discovered it too light-weight for its personal good, with less-than-ideal battery life, and famous that if it “finally ends up going the way in which of the dodo just like the iPhone Mini and Plus,” it would become a “testbed for miniaturizing parts into a sensible glasses kind issue” and will embody parts of a foldable iPhone nonetheless to return.

Bloomberg’s story on Chowdhury’s departure (attributed to nameless “folks acquainted with the transfer”) is from Bloomberg’s intrepid Apple scoop-getter, Mark Gurman, who has hastened to indicate that he doesn’t suppose the iPhone Air is a few type of company catastrophe that deserves Chowdhury being compelled out. “His exit is unrelated to the debut of the cellphone, which has seen its design praised regardless of underwhelming gross sales,” Gurman tweeted.

His exit is unrelated to the debut of the cellphone, which has seen its design praised regardless of underwhelming gross sales. https://t.co/sw2mtOGs58

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) November 18, 2025

Chowdhury joined Apple in 2019, across the identical time celeb chief design officer Jony Ive departed the corporate. According to reports, that interval would have coincided with the corporate’s makes an attempt to recuperate from the slow-motion meltdown that ensued when Ive seemingly misplaced his religion in Apple on account of disagreements over what the Apple Watch was imagined to be, after which principally stopped coming to work, and let his division principally atrophy.

Based on Gurman, Chowdhury’s resignation “made waves internally, given his rising profile inside the design staff.”