San Francisco, Jan 26 (IANS): In a biggest reshuffle in nearly a decade, Apple on Tuesday elevated John Ternus as SVP of hardware engineering as current hardware head Dan Riccio is transitioning to a new role at the company.

Ternus will run the company's hardware efforts, in the same way that Craig Federighi -- Apple's senior vice president of software engineering -- runs the development of iOS and macOS.

"Ternus' deep expertise and wide breadth of experience make him a bold and visionary leader of our Hardware Engineering teams. I want to congratulate them both on these exciting new steps, and I'm looking forward to many more innovations they'll help bring to the world," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

Ternus led the hardware team designing the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, in addition to working on Apple's M1 chips.

Ternus joined Apple's Product Design team in 2001 and has been a vice president of Hardware Engineering since 2013.

Riccio has been a leader in designing, developing, and engineering almost all of Apple's products.

From the first generation iMac to the more recent 5G iPhone lineup, M1-based Macs, and AirPods Max, Riccio built the Hardware Engineering teams and scaled Apple's ability to innovate across multiple new product lines with the highest quality.

After joining Apple in 1998 as a leader on the Product Design team, Riccio became vice president of iPad Hardware Engineering in 2010, and in 2012 he joined the executive team as the leader of Hardware Engineering.

Apple said that Riccio will continue to play an instrumental role in shaping the future of Apple's products in his new position as a vice president of engineering.

"Next up, I'm looking forward to doing what I love most — focusing all my time and energy at Apple on creating something new and wonderful that I couldn't be more excited about," Riccio said.

Riccio's move is the latest departure from Apple's executive leadership team in recent months.

Sir Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer who is behind the look and feel of the iPhone or iMac that you use today, formally left Apple in November 2019.

British-origin Ive who worked at Apple for almost 30 years announced to move on and decided to form an independent design firm called LoveFrom that would treat Apple as its most prestigious client.

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, stepped down from his position in May 2020 and became an Apple Fellow, continuing a storied career that began at the company in 1987.