From Microsoft’s latest radical reorganization and subsequent purchase of Nokia’s devices unit to Google’s acquisition of Motorola, it’s clear that after decades of horizontal integration, high tech is in an age of increased verticalization. Samsung is customizing ARM Holdings’ processor chips, and Google is producing everything from operating systems to consumer hardware. What is driving this change? The objective today, for companies like these, is to control the end-to-end customer experience as much as possible. As Apple demonstrates, in order to deliver coherent experiences across multiple touchpoints — ideally, all of them — you need control. And to meaningfully convert this control into consumer value, you need design.