Apple CEO Tim Cook quits to become chair with long-time lieutenant to pilot iPhone-maker’s new era

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said Monday that he would step down after nearly 15 years running an operation that rode the wild popularity of the iPhone to become one of the most influential and valuable companies in the world.

Cook, 65, will move into a new role as Apple’s executive chair in September and be succeeded in the company’s corner office by John Ternus, the 50-year-old head of Apple’s hardware engineering.

Cook’s resignation will end one of the most successful management runs in the history of US business. During his tenure, Apple’s annual profit quadrupled to more than $US110 billion ($153b), while its value ballooned more than tenfold to $US4 trillion ($5.5tr).

Cook replaced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs shortly before Jobs’ death in 2011, having earned a reputation for perfecting the nuts and bolts of a global consumer electronics business.

Apple has since defined how a modern technology company operates, with products assembled in a supply chain that stretches from the giant operations that Cook helped create in China to India and Brazil and a popular retail business that operates on five continents.

“He stepped into the world’s biggest shoes — the biggest shoes that anybody on the planet has ever had to step into — and he’s done an amazing job,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer from 2004 to 2014.

Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and rose through its ranks as he oversaw the development of Macs and iPads. He will be Apple’s eighth CEO since its founding 50 years ago and its third since Jobs returned in 1997 to pull the company from the brink of bankruptcy.

“I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come,” Ternus said in a statement. “I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century,” he added.

Ternus will take over a company that has not created a new mainstream product in a number of years and faces questions about its business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent months, worrying investors about the depth of its next generation of managers and its long-term strategy, particularly with artificial intelligence.

The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI.

Apple is also navigating increasingly choppy political waters, including whiplash over the Trump administration’s tariffs, a looming antitrust trial and geopolitical tensions with China.

In recent years, Cook, out of necessity, had become the technology industry’s leading diplomat, making regular visits to Washington and Beijing to try to manage the often conflicting agendas of President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

As executive chair, he “will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world,” Apple said in a statement.

“This is not goodbye,” Cook said in a letter on Apple’s website. But, he added, it is a “moment of transition.”

Apple remains one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to the stability of sales of its iPhones, other products including the Apple Watch, and services including iCloud and Apple Pay.

Cook joined Apple in 1998 from the computer maker Compaq, transformed how Apple managed its product inventory and became its chief operating officer in 2007.

In a 2010 commencement speech he said Apple and Jobs had provided him with “the opportunity to engage in truly meaningful work every day.”

Although Cook rarely discussed his personal life, other than his childhood in Alabama and his college years at Auburn, he also became one of the most prominent gay executives in corporate America.

Despite years of success, Cook never shook the perception that he was not a technological visionary like Jobs. When he took over the helm of Apple in 2011, the release of new iPhones had already become cultural touchstones, as closely watched as the latest blockbusters from Hollywood.

“It’s very difficult to innovate when you’re the size of Apple,” said Mike Slade, who advised Apple and Jobs on product and marketing strategy from 1998 to 2004. He added that Cook’s legacy was “continuous improvement in every aspect and fantastic new products.”

In recent years, Apple has raised the prices of its devices and leaned on its services for growth, selling more software to be used in the more than 1 billion iPhones in use around the world.

Its services business has steadily grown over the past decade, most recently accounting for about a quarter of its annual revenue.

But Apple has been seeing mixed results in other parts of its business, with slowing growth from wearables, which include the Apple Watch and AirPods, and sometimes middling sales in China. In 2024, the company made a disappointing foray into so-called augmented reality through its headset, the Vision Pro.

Apple’s relationship with China has otherwise become a vulnerability. In addition to the country’s accounting, at times, for a quarter of Apple’s annual revenue, the company makes an estimated 80 per cent of its iPhones in China.

Cook has forged a relationship with Donald Trump, who has criticised Apple for not making iPhones in the United States.

Last year, Cook presented Trump with a 24-carat gold gift, as his company sought to avoid the president’s threats of tariffs on its devices. In 2019, Trump called Cook “Tim Apple,” a mistake the executive embraced by briefly changing his last name to Apple’s logo on the social media platform X.

“He calls me, and others don’t,” Trump said in 2019.

“Others go out and hire very expensive consultants, and Tim Cook calls Donald Trump directly. Pretty good, and I would take that call, too.”

Ternus joined Apple four years after his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He initially worked on screens for Apple’s Macs and eventually became a key lieutenant of Dan Riccio, a longtime engineering leader at the company. As Riccio rose through the ranks at Apple, Ternus’ responsibilities expanded to include teams working on Macs and iPads. Ternus succeeded Riccio in 2021.

Apple also said Monday that Johny Srouji, who has led its work on its own chips, had been promoted to chief hardware officer. In addition to helming hardware technologies at the company, Srouji will take over Ternus’ role overseeing hardware engineering.

Now, Ternus will prepare to face a concern that dogged Cook throughout his tenure: Can Apple create new, industry-changing products without Jobs at the helm?

“John is going to have to find a way to have Apple make products that make a dent in the universe again,” said Cameron Rogers, who worked at Apple in product marketing from 2005 to 2022.

“Big companies don’t die, they become irrelevant.”