And lest we forget the second part of Mansfield's brief:

This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

Semiconductors are, of course, the foundation of the processors and chips that run of our devices. While Apple's Mac lines still rely on processors provided by Intel, the company has been producing its own chips for its mobile devices since . That and subsequent processors have resulted from Apple's , a small semiconductor company.

Having its semiconductor design in-house has given Apple an even deeper level of control over its products--at least, the mobile ones. And, going forward, it seems hard to believe that Apple will leave it at that. The Mac is still an important part of Cupertino's strategy, and with all the custom work that Apple has been putting into its hardware design--the internals of the Retina MacBook Pros, for example, or the redesigned iMac--it's not hard to imagine the company will want to eventually go that last nanometer and control the chips for its desktop and portable computers as well as its mobile devices.