Apple will be headed by John Ternus. What You Need to Know about Tim Cook's Successor

After 15 years at the head of one of the largest technology corporations, Tim Cook will replace 50-year-old John Ternus as Apple CEO on September 1. He started working at the company in 2001 as an engineer, and today he is characterized as a calm and effective leader who strives for innovation. What is known about the future CEO of Apple is in the Izvestia article.

I joined the position of engineer

• John Ternus has been working at Apple for 25 years now. He got a job at a corporation as a mechanical engineer, having previously worked at Virtual Research Systems. Already in 2013, he took the position of vice president of hardware development, and in 2021 he became the head of this division.

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• It was under his leadership that Apple's own silicon chips were developed and launched for the Mac computer line, sales of which increased dramatically after Intel chips were replaced in 2020. Among the new products that debuted under his leadership in the hardware division are the Apple Watch and the AirPods line of headphones, which have become important business lines, as well as the Vision Pro headset, which, however, has not been widely used. He also worked on the release of all generations of iPads and many generations of iPhones.

Old line and new tasks

• The appointment of a person who has worked for the company for 25 years, and in recent years under the direct supervision of Tim Cook, indicates a desire to continue the current line of development of the company with an emphasis on profitability growth, but there is also a groundwork for innovation and product line differentiation. During his 15 years at the helm of Apple, Cook has quadrupled annual profits to $110 billion a year, and the company's value has increased more than 10 times and reached $4 trillion. However, during all this time, the company has not been able to release a radically new product that would take on a portion of revenue no less than the iPhone.

• Ternus is characterized as a calm but effective leader. He doesn't have the bright charisma or expressiveness of Steve Jobs, but these qualities should help him cope with the challenges Apple has faced in recent years. First of all, this is a lack of development in the field of AI. The second task is to ensure the appearance of a new top product. In an interview, Ternus noted that he likes to participate in the work of development teams himself.

• In terms of the development of artificial intelligence, the company will have to face competition from other representatives of the Silicon Valley bigtech, who have been betting on it for a long time. As part of this, Apple intends to update the Siri virtual assistant. And developing a new product and expanding the range of gadgets is vital for Ternus in order to overcome 15 years of criticism of Cook for his lack of innovation. In the meantime, the company is too dependent on smartphones, it needs a new growth engine.

• Ternus will lead Apple at a time when the company is facing a question about business prospects. In a short period of time, several top managers left, which raised questions among investors about the competence of the new generation of executives. It also raised doubts about the long-term strategy of the company, which, unlike other technology corporations, did not rely heavily on AI. Among other things, her positions are influenced by political issues: the tariff wars between the United States and China, the forced postponement of production, problems with the supply of helium for microchips due to the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. These and other challenges will have to be taken on by the new CEO, while Tim Cook will take a chair on the board of directors and will be responsible for negotiations with the White House.