Tony Fadell, Senior Vice President of Apple’s iPod division, will now serve only as an adviser to Chief Executive Steve Jobs, therefore reducing his role at the company. He will be replaced by Mark Papermaster, a former IBM vice president. He will lead the iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams, even if IBM sued him last week over a noncompete clause in his contract to try to prevent him from joining Apple. Fadell was part of the executive team that was involved in developing the iPhone. Furthermore, Danielle Lambert, Fadell’s wife, is leaving Apple at the end of the year, as she was vice president of human resources.

Fadell was the first to have the idea of “marrying” the Napster-like music store with a hard drive-based MP3 player. He was put in charge of the engineering team that built the first iPod by Apple’s Jon Rubenstein in 2001 and he was promoted to vice president of iPod engineering in 2004, being president of Apple’s iPod division since April 2006. Back in the 1990s, Fadell started a company, Fuse, which aimed to produce a new array of consumer electronics devices for the masses. After his business ran out of funding, Fadell tried to develop his gadgets for another company. Fadell has filed more than 20 patents for his work. The reasons for which he quit his job as Senior Vice President of the iPod division remain unknown and Apple has declined to comment on the story. Furthermore, it seems that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is looking for a replacement, as he is thinking of retiring. A possible successor for him might be operating officer Tim Cook.