Apple creates new iPod division, shuffles execs
BY REUTERS
[San Francisco / Reuters News Service, 20 May 2004] - Apple Computer has created a new division within the maker of the Macintosh computer to sell its popular iPod, the market leading digital music player, the company said yesterday.
Jon Rubinstein, who has led the Cupertino, California-based company's hardware engineering efforts, will run the new division, an Apple spokesman said.
Timothy Cook, head of Apple's worldwide sales and operations, will lead a newly organised Macintosh division, Apple said. Tim Bucher, now in charge of Macintosh system development, will head up the Mac's hardware engineering.
The moves were announced in a company-wide internal e-mail sent by Steve Jobs, Apple's chairman, chief executive and co-founder, and first reported by the New York Times yesterday.
"This organisational refinement will focus our talent and resources even more precisely on our industry-leading Macintosh computers and the wildly successful iPod," the spokesman said.
Since the iPod's introduction in October 2001, Apple has sold more than three million of the devices.
Industry analysts have speculated that Apple might ultimately broaden the uses for an iPod beyond playing music, such as for watching movies.
Already, third-party providers sell accessories that let iPod users transfer pictures from digital cameras to the iPod and use it as a voice recorder.
Apple's iPod lets users transfer music from their Mac or Windows computer to the device, and works with the Apple iTunes online music store, the most popular legal downloading service
