The Wall Street Journal (and the often informed Yukari Iwatani Kane) are reporting that while it’s unknown how much iPhone 4 antennagate and white iPhone 4 delays played in SVP of mobile hardware, Mark Papermaster’s exit from Apple, there were broader cultural issues at play:

Mr. Papermaster had lost the confidence of Mr. Jobs months ago and hasn’t been part of the decision-making process for some time, these people said. They added that Mr. Papermaster didn’t appear to have the type of creative thinking expected at Apple and wasn’t used to Apple’s corporate culture, where even senior executives are expected to keep on top of the smallest details of their areas of responsibility and often have to handle many tasks directly, as opposed to delegating them.

One of these people also said Mr. Papermaster had difficulty maneuvering Apple’s internal politics.

The WSJ does say it was Steve Jobs, not Papermaster, who decided to go ahead with iPhone 4′s new antenna design.

Papermaster apparently also started his tenure with Apple while Jobs was on leave of absence and might not have been prepared for Jobs’ intense management style when he came back to work.

[WSJ]

Mark Papermaster, whose departure from IBM for Apple led to some high profile legal wrangling, has now left Apple — chronologically following the antennagate saga, though no direct correlation has been reported. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the New York Times:

[Papermaster] is leaving the company and Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering, is assuming his responsibilities. [...] Mr. Mansfield already oversees several technologies that are part of the iPhone, including the A4 chip, the retina display and touch screens,

Before being removed from Apple.com, Papermaster’s bio read as follows.

Mark Papermaster is Apple’s senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering. He leads the iPod and iPhone engineering teams, and reports directly to Apple’s CEO.

Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience, and was previously a vice president at IBM responsible for blade development including x86, POWER, storage blades, chassis, network electronics and associated ecosystem. He started his career in application-specific IC development circuit design at IBM’s Microelectronics Division, and had technical and management assignments in quality, CAD tool applications, and microprocessors.

While Papermaster was notably absent from Apple’s recent iPhone 4 press conference, his replacement was up on stage with Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Mansfield was front and center.

Update: According to Daring Fireball‘s source, Papermaster was fired following antennagate:

Inside Apple, he’s “the guy responsible for the antenna” — that’s a quote from a source back on July 23. (Another quote from the same source: “Apparently the antenna guys used to have a big chip on their shoulder. No more.”)

[NYT, Daring Fireball]

Following up on rumors of a $800 Apple netbook, MacBook, iTablet, etc. VentureBeat reports that Apple might also use the new platform to introduce their long-rumored custom system-on-a-chip.

This would be the result of Apple purchasing fabless chip design firm Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi) and hiring Papermaster from IBM and graphics processor (GPU) gurus x2 from AMD/ATI (though whether or not it includes the ARM and PowerVR licenses for cores found in the iPhone and iPod touch, or beefier Intel chips found in the Mac line is uncertain).

While Steve Jobs said PA Semi was going to be used for iPods and iPhones, VentureBeat claims the team was actually split in two, half for iPod/iPhone and half for the tablet.

TUAW speculates that, given recent news of problems between Apple and Nvidia, who currently makes the Mac integrated chipsets, perhaps Apple will push the custom work into that line as well.

Either way, we’ve seen the huge benefit shared software technology has provided for the iPhone and Mac (Spotlight, QuickTime X to name but two), Apple going in-house with the chipsets could be just as beneficial…

The long-running dispute between Apple and IBM over Apple’s hire of Mark Papermaster has come to a close, according to Apple PR:

Apple® today announced that Mark Papermaster will be coming to Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, on April 24. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod® and iPhone™ hardware engineering teams. The litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolved

Papermaster will take the helm of iPhone and iPod hardware, replacing Tony Fadell (who was rumored to have pushed for Linux to be the basis for the iPhone).  Odd that he’s going to have to wait until April 24th to take charge, but we suspect that won’t slow things down too much on hardware development.  Got any advice for Papermaster?  Would you like to seem him shephard in that iPhone HD? Think he’ll push for Quad-Core goodness?

According to Apple Insider, US Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas has issued an order preventing Mark Papermaster from taking his new position as a vice president at Apple, pending a decision over IBM’s “no compete clause” inspired lawsuit.

Apple and Papermaster have responded, but Daring Fireball doesn’t think they have much to worry about, give “Application Group, Inc. v. Hunter Group, Inc., 61 Cal.App.4th 881 (1998), a California non-compete clause case”:

We further conclude, in agreement with the trial court, that California law may be applied to determine the enforceability of a covenant not to compete, in an employment agreement between an employee who is not a resident of California and an employer whose business is based outside of California, when a California-based employer seeks to recruit or hire the nonresident for employment in California.

Basically, California don’t play no-compete, and Papermaster’s going to be employed in California, so IBM’s legal maneuvering, while time consuming, is probably not a deal breaker.

Apple has announced that Tony Fadell, senior VP of the iPod Division, and wife Danielle Lambert, VP of Human Resources, are “reducing their roles within the company as they devote more time to their young family.”

Who will succeed Fadell, who is sometimes referred to as the “father of the iPod”?

Mark Papermaster, who readers may remember Apple is accused of stealing away from IBM. Says Steve Jobs:

“Mark is a seasoned leader and is going to be an excellent addition to our senior management team. Tony and Dani have each made important contributions to Apple over the past eight years. We’re sorry to see Dani go, and are looking forward to working with Tony in his new capacity.”

So with Papermaster working on the hardware, Scott Forstall on the software, and Eddy Cue running Internet Services (iTunes, App Store, MobileMe), it looks like Apple has completely overhauled its iPhone leadership in the last 6 months.

What does that mean moving forward? And will TiPb get our iPhone HD in 2009?!