Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO

Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down from the job he inherited from the late Steve Jobs, ending a nearly 15-year reign that saw the company’s market value soar by more than $3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fuelled era of prosperity.

The company made the announcement on Monday.

Cook, 65, will turn over the CEO duties to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, on September 1, while remaining involved with the Cupertino, California, company as executive chairman. That is similar to the transitions made by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Netflix’s Reed Hastings after they ended their highly successful tenures as CEO.

Although he never shook the perception that he lacked Jobs’s vision, Cook leveraged the popularity of the iPhone and other breakthroughs orchestrated by his predecessor to lift Apple to heights that seemed unfathomable when it was on the brink of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a letter posted on the company’s website.

Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of numerous products and services, including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, as well as services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.

Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has grown from a market capitalisation of approximately $350bn to $4 trillion, representing a more than 1,000 percent increase, and yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108bn in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416bn in fiscal year 2025.

Ternus, 50, an Apple veteran, became senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021. He was instrumental in the introduction of multiple new product lines, including iPad and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch.

“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. 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,” Cook said in a statement.

As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.