Tim Cook Steps Down; Ternus Named CEO
- Apple CEO Tim Cook announced he will step down, handing CEO duties to hardware head John Ternus. - Cook, 65, will transition leadership while remaining at Apple during the handover. - The change signals a major leadership shift at Cupertino-based Apple with potential product and market impacts (patch.com).
Apple said on April 20 that Tim Cook will become executive chairman and hand the chief executive job to John Ternus on September 1, 2026. (apple.com) The company said its board approved the move unanimously after what it called a long-term succession process. Cook, 65, has run Apple since August 2011. (apple.com) Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, the executive who oversees the teams behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro. He joined Apple in 2001 and has led hardware engineering since 2021. (apple.com) Cook’s exit from the chief executive role ends a 15-year run that began after Steve Jobs resigned in August 2011. Apple said its market value grew from about $350 billion to $4 trillion during Cook’s tenure, while annual revenue rose from $108 billion in fiscal 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal 2025. (apple.com) The handoff puts a hardware executive in charge as Apple heads into another iPhone cycle and prepares to report fiscal second-quarter results on April 30. Apple’s investor relations site says that earnings call is scheduled for 5 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. (apple.com) Apple’s leadership page says Ternus reports directly to Cook and has overseen engineering work across every major product category. That makes him one of the few executives with direct responsibility for the company’s device roadmap, from Macs to wearables. (apple.com) Cook is not leaving Apple outright. The company said he will stay on as executive chairman of the board, a structure that keeps him inside the company during the transition while shifting day-to-day management to Ternus. (apple.com) Apple’s last full fiscal year shows the scale of the business Ternus is inheriting: $102.5 billion in revenue in the September 2025 quarter alone, with Apple reporting fiscal 2025 as a record September quarter for total company revenue, iPhone revenue, and earnings per share. (apple.com) The immediate next date is September 1, when Cook moves upstairs and Ternus takes the chief executive title at the world’s most valuable public company. (apple.com)
