Tim Cook to Step Down as CEO
- Apple’s CEO Tim Cook announced he will step down and hand duties to hardware chief John Ternus. - Cook, 65, will transfer leadership to head of hardware engineering John Ternus. - The succession marks a major leadership shift at Cupertino-based Apple and could reshape product priorities (patch.com).
Apple said April 20 that Tim Cook will step down as chief executive on September 1, with hardware chief John Ternus taking over. (apple.com) Cook will not leave the company. Apple said he will become executive chairman of the board on the same date, and Ternus will also join Apple’s board when he becomes chief executive. (apple.com) Ternus currently serves as Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, the group that oversees the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro. Apple said he joined its Product Design team in 2001 and has been a vice president of hardware engineering since 2013. (apple.com) Cook has run Apple since August 2011, when he succeeded Steve Jobs. Before that, Apple said, he was chief operating officer and managed the company’s global sales, operations and supply chain. (apple.com) The change hands Apple to an executive whose career has been rooted in building devices rather than running operations. That puts the company’s hardware organization at the center of the first chief executive transition since Jobs handed Apple to Cook nearly 15 years ago. (apple.com 1) (apple.com 2) Apple said the move followed a “long-term succession planning process” approved unanimously by its board. Arthur Levinson, Apple’s current nonexecutive chairman, will become lead independent director when Cook becomes executive chairman. (apple.com) (cnbc.com) Cook’s tenure reshaped Apple into a larger and more services-heavy company. Under his leadership, Apple introduced products including Apple Watch and AirPods, expanded into subscriptions and payments, and became the first U.S. company to reach a $3 trillion market value. (apple.com) (cnbc.com) Ternus arrives as Apple is still balancing its core device business with newer bets such as the Vision Pro headset and its artificial intelligence push. His portfolio already spans nearly every major product line, giving investors and employees a familiar engineer rather than an outside hire. (apple.com) (cnbc.com) Apple framed the handoff as continuity, not a break: Cook stays at the board level, and Ternus comes from the company’s top ranks. The practical change starts September 1, when the person who has run Apple since 2011 gives the chief executive job to the executive who has been building its hardware. (apple.com)
