In general, the consumer tech industry is run by engineering types. Which makes sense when you consider that the cornerstone of consumer-based innovation is, at the end or the day, physical product. Mechanical engineers team up with industrial designers and work together within the constraints of manufacturers, budgets, schedules and, often, sales opportunities. At the end, the goal is to design the products that you pick up at your local Best Buy.
Just to complicate things even more, more times than not you’ll find that the sales people at a lot of these companies are the marketing folks as well. The problem with this is sales and marketing tend to serve different masters. While the sales side of the brain wants to move units (Sell in! Sell through!), marketing wants to differentiate from the competition and build an enduring relationship that can be very time consuming. Sales commissions work on quarterly numbers, and how does one really gauge ROI with regards to building a brand? Yes, I’m making a sweeping generalization, but you get my point.