Tim Cook to Step Down as Apple Names New CEO－By Rolfe Winkler, WSJ

Tim Cook, the longtime leader of Apple, is stepping down after transforming the iPhone maker into a titan of the technology industry, handing the reins to a veteran engineer.

Apple said John Ternus, the affable head of its hardware division, will take over as chief executive.

Ternus, 50 years old, takes the lead of the iPhone maker as it works to rekindle its creative fire and chart a hardware-heavy future in the AI era. He follows Steve Jobs, who led the invention of the most popular consumer product in history, and Cook, who squeezed so much profit from the device that Apple became the world’s most valuable company.

His appointment will take effect Sept. 1, when Cook will become executive chairman, succeeding longtime chair Art Levinson.

Cook, 65, will be remembered for creating immense value, including in recent years when he managed to avoid major supply chain disruptions while navigating geopolitical and economic disruptions, including President Trump’s tariffs and pandemic lockdowns. During his tenure, Apple’s market value grew by nearly $3.7 trillion, to about $4 trillion, surpassing the value created by any other American CEO in total dollars, save Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

Known for deft politicking inside the giant company, Ternus was widely seen as the leading candidate to succeed Cook. As a top hardware executive who worked at the company for 25 years, he worked on the iPad, then later the Mac and AirPods before taking over responsibility for all of Apple’s products, including its most important, the iPhone.

“John is a deep collaborator,” said Chris Deaver, a former Apple human-resources staffer who worked with Ternus. “Having a great product leader at the helm right now is a good future indicator for Apple.”

A central question for Ternus is how he can help Apple maintain its dominance at a time when most of its rivals are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into computing infrastructure and embedding cutting-edge AI tools into their products and daily workflows.

Recent company moves have offered a hint at its strategy. Ternus has little experience with AI and the company has fallen behind rivals in developing and releasing frontier models. It isn’t out of the race entirely, however, as iPhones are still a primary way consumers access AI apps.

The company’s App Store AI revenue is set to top $1 billion this year simply by collecting subscription fees from companies such as OpenAI. Analysts see that role expanding as Apple prepares to release an overhauled version of its Siri assistant later this year.

AI providers who want to reach users of the 2.5 billion active Apple devices in circulation will have to pay Apple handsomely, a likelihood expected to give the company more time to create new AI solutions that can work without the massive computing costs its peers are facing.

Ternus will also need to spark Apple’s innovative fire, which some critics feel has been lost under Cook. The company’s most successful products since the iPhone are AirPods earbuds and the Apple Watch, which are big businesses on their own, yet pale next to the iPhone. Other efforts have been less successful. The Vision Pro headset has been a sales dud. A project to build a self-driving car was killed after the company spent billions on development.

One of Ternus’s central accomplishments was working with Apple’s in-house silicon team to replace Intel chips inside Mac computers with chips designed by Apple itself. The chips proved more energy efficient and Mac sales soared after the change, which came in 2020.

Ternus is well-known inside Apple for his demeanor and engineering competence. Jobs and some other executives who remained at the company after his death had a sharp management style, sometimes yelling at staffers. Cook broke from that pattern with his more genial approach. Ternus’s style is similar to Cook’s.

Ternus has helped lead a redesign of Apple’s iPhone lineup, one that began with so-called liquid glass software revamp and continued with the iPhone Air last year and a foldable device expected in the fall. Apple has raised Ternus’s profile of late, allowing him to unveil the iPhone Air at its annual iPhone event.

A collegiate swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, Ternus cuts a trim figure and favors athleisure outfits and sneakers.

Cook is likely to be remembered as a chief executive of consequence, a master of the supply chain who found novel ways to squeeze more value from the iPhone and expand its base of users.

Through much of his years leading Apple, he had an almost monastic commitment to the company, waking up before 4 a.m. to review global sales data. He also met with top operations and finance staff on Fridays, a meeting some called “date night with Tim” because it stretched late into the evening.

Over his tenure, he navigated Apple through countless political controversies in the U.S. and abroad, establishing a style of personal CEO diplomacy with world leaders from Barack Obama to Trump and China’s Xi Jinping.

In recent years, as U.S. politics has been defined by severe polarization, Cook has stressed the value of engaging on important issues, saying it is even more important to do so when we disagree.

In two Trump administrations defined in part by tariffs that altered business supply chains around the world, Cook stayed in close contact with Trump, ultimately promising to bring elements of its chip manufacturing to the U.S. while diversifying some device assembly away from China. That won Apple coveted exemptions from certain tariffs and levies and also created a model for interacting with the president that other chief executives followed closely.

Cook spoke often about Apple’s values and has discussed the racism he saw growing up in Alabama. In 2014, he came out as gay, saying he decided to do so in the interest of the greater good, despite his general desire for privacy.

On many occasions, Cook has harked back to the advice he received from Jobs before he died, when Jobs famously told Cook to never ask what he would do and just do “what’s right.”

“In the long arc of time, people change their mind on companies, but we’ve always suited up and fought,” Cook said at a Journal event shortly after he took the helm. “Our North Star is always on making the best products.”

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