Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple‘s chief executive after 15 years in the role. John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will take over as Apple CEO on 1 September.
Cook will move to chairperson of Apple’s board on that date. Johny Srouji, Apple’s SVP of hardware technologies, will expand his remit to cover Ternus’s former portfolio. Apple shares edged higher following the announcement.
Cook’s 15 years at the top
Cook joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011, taking over from co-founder Steve Jobs. During his tenure, Apple’s market capitalisation grew from roughly $350 billion to more than $4 trillion. That made it one of the most valuable companies in history. Cook oversaw the launch of the Apple Watch, AirPods, iCloud, and Apple Pay, and expanded Apple’s services business substantially.
The transition comes as Apple faces mounting pressure. Supply chain disruptions, a memory component shortage, and geopolitical tensions at its Asian manufacturing base all weigh on the business. So do questions about Apple’s AI strategy and tightening regulatory scrutiny in the US and Europe. Despite those headwinds, the company posted record earnings in its most recent quarter, with the iPhone still its primary revenue driver.
What the choice of John Ternus as Apple CEO signals
Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became VP of hardware engineering in 2013. He joined the executive leadership team in 2021, and the industry had long viewed him as the frontrunner to succeed Cook.
Dipanjan Chatterjee, VP principal analyst at Forrester, praised Cook’s operational record but noted a gap. Apple, he said, had not delivered the step-change innovation needed to reposition it for the next two decades.
“That’s where John Ternus comes in. Ternus is a hardware engineer, which signals that Apple will seek differentiation in its physical products even as it looks to reframe the device as a substrate for intelligent experiences,” Chatterjee said.
Chatterjee also warned that Ternus must break from incremental updates and move beyond the iPhone: “He must resist the temptation of incrementalism that has plagued Apple of late and escape the iPhone’s gravitational pull in his quest for the next disruptive form factor.”
Cook described his successor: “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer [and] the soul of an innovator. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
Ternus acknowledged the weight of the transition: “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another.”