Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said Monday that he will step down after nearly 15 years running the operation that has fueled the iPhone’s wild popularity to become one of the world’s most influential and valuable companies.
Mr. Cook, 65, will move into a new role as Apple’s executive chairman in September, and will be succeeded in the company’s corner office by John Ternus, Apple’s 50-year-old head of hardware engineering.
Mr. Cook’s resignation ends one of the most successful managerial runs in American business history. During his tenure, Apple’s annual profit quadrupled to more than $110 billion, while its value grew more than tenfold to $4 trillion.
Mr. Cook replaced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs shortly before Mr. Jobs’s death in 2011 when he gained a reputation for refining the nuts and bolts of the 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 Mr. Cook helped create in China to India and Brazil and a popular retailer that spans five continents.
“He stepped into the biggest shoes in the world — the biggest shoes anyone on the planet has ever had to step into — and he did an amazing job,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer from 2004 to 2014.
Mr. Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and rose through the ranks, overseeing the development of the Mac and iPad. He will be Apple’s eighth chief executive since it was founded 50 years ago and its third since Mr 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 coming years,” Mr. Ternus said in a statement. “I promise to lead with the values and vision that have defined this special place for half a century,” he added.
Mr. Ternus will take over a company that has not created a new mainstream product for years and is facing questions about its business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent months, leaving investors concerned about the depth of its new generation of executives and its long-term strategy, particularly with artificial intelligence. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the tech industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing artificial intelligence.
Apple is also navigating increasingly turbulent political waters, including the Trump administration’s whiplash over tariffs, a looming antitrust lawsuit and geopolitical tensions with China.
In recent years, Mr. Cook has become the technology industry’s top diplomat out of necessity, regularly visiting Washington and Beijing to try to navigate the often conflicting agendas of President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. As executive chairman, he “will assist with certain aspects of the company, including dealing with policymakers around the world,” Apple said in a press statement.
“This is not goodbye,” Mr. Cook said in the letter on Apple’s website. However, he added that it was a “moment of transition”.
Apple remains one of the most profitable companies in the world thanks to stable sales of its iPhones, products like the Apple Watch, and services including iCloud and Apple Pay.
Mr. Cook joined Apple in 1998 from computer maker Compaq, changed the way Apple managed its product inventory, and became its chief operating officer in 2007. In a 2010 commencement speech at Auburn University, he said that Apple and Mr. Jobs had given him “the opportunity to engage in truly meaningful work every day.”
Although Mr. Cook rarely spoke about his personal life, apart from 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, Mr. Cook has never shaken the impression that he is not a technological visionary like Mr. Jobs. When he took the helm of Apple in 2011, the release of new iPhones had already become cultural touchstones, as closely watched as the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
“It’s very difficult to innovate when you’re the size of Apple,” said Mike Slade, who advised Apple and Mr. Jobs on product and marketing strategy from 1998 to 2004. He added that Mr. Cook’s legacy was “constant improvement in every aspect and fantastic new products.”
In recent years, Apple has raised the prices of its devices and banked on the growth of its services, selling more software that will be used in the more than one billion iPhones in use worldwide. Its services business has grown steadily over the past decade and recently accounted for about a quarter of its annual revenue.
But Apple has seen mixed results in other parts of its business, with slower growth in wearables that 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 with its Vision Pro headset.
Apple’s relationship with China has otherwise become a vulnerable spot. In addition to accounting for the country, at times a quarter of Apple’s annual revenue, the company makes an estimated 80 percent of its iPhones in China.
Mr. Cook has forged a relationship with Mr. Trump, who has criticized Apple for not making iPhones in the United States. Last year, Mr. Cook presented Mr. Trump with a 24-karat gold gift as his company sought to avoid the president’s threats of tariffs on its equipment. In 2019, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cook “Tim Apple,” a slip the executive accepted by briefly changing his surname to an X in the Apple logo.
“He calls me and others don’t,” Mr. Trump said in 2019. “Others go and hire very expensive consultants and Tim Cook calls Donald Trump directly. Pretty good and I’d take that call too.”
Mr. Ternus joined Apple four years after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He initially worked on screens for Apple Macs and eventually became a key lieutenant to Dan Riccio, a longtime engineer at the company. As Mr. Riccio rose through the ranks at Apple, Mr. Ternus’ responsibilities expanded to include teams working on Macs and iPads. Mr. Ternus replaced Mr. Riccio in 2021.
Apple also said Monday that Johny Srouji, who led its work on its own chips, has been promoted to hardware director. In addition to managing hardware technology at the company, Mr. Srouji will assume Mr. Ternus’ role, overseeing hardware engineering.
Now Mr. Ternus prepares to face the concerns that have dogged Mr. Cook throughout his tenure: Can Apple create new, industry-changing products without Mr. Jobs at the helm?
“John is going to have to find a way to get Apple to make products that put a hole in the universe again,” said Cameron Rogers, who worked in product marketing at Apple from 2005 to 2022. “Big companies don’t die, they become irrelevant.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
