Jonathan "Jony" Ive, a close creative collaborator with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs whose iPhone and other designs fueled Apple's rise to a $1 trillion company, will leave later this year to form an independent design company.
Apple said Ive will continue work on its products at his new venture, but shares fell as much as 1.5 percent to $197.44 in after-market trading, wiping about $9 billion from the firm's value.
Ive spent nearly three decades at Apple, leading the design of the candy-colored iMacs that helped Apple re-emerge from near death in the 1990s to the iPhone, regarded by some experts as one of the most successful consumer products of all time.