Apple has tapped 25-year hardware engineerJohn Ternus as its next chief executive, ending Tim Cook's 15-year run atop a $4 trillion (£2.96 trillion) company and setting up a possible shift back to product innovation from the services empire Cook built.
The Cupertino companyconfirmed on 20 Aprilthat Cook, 65, will step down on 31 August and become executive chairman. Ternus, 50, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, takes over as chief executive officer (CEO) on 1 September.
Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, spent 15 years turning Apple from a gadget maker into a subscription powerhouse. In fiscal 2025, the services segment brought in $109.2 billion (£80.8 billion), up 14% year over year, according to Apple's annual 10-K filing. That revenue covers Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple TV, iCloud, AppleCare, the App Store, and advertising.
The December 2025 quarter alone generated $30 billion (£22.2 billion) in services, the first time the segment cleared that threshold in a single quarter. Gross margins on services sit above 75%, compared with roughly 36% on hardware. That gap is why Wall Street treats services as the engine of Apple's $4 trillion (£2.96 trillion) valuation.
Ternus inherits that engine but did not build it.
Ternus joined Apple in 2001 after four years as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, a defunct firm that built some of the earliest commercially available virtual reality (VR) headsets. He rose to vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and to senior vice president in 2021.
In that role, he oversaw every major product launch since 2021, including iPhone 17, iPad Pro, M-series Macs, AirPods, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Vision Pro. Cook said Ternus has 'the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator' and called him 'the right person to lead Apple into the future.'
Johny Srouji will become Chief Hardware Officer, consolidating Ternus's former portfolio, while Tom Marieb takes direct leadership of the Hardware Engineering unit. Srouji will oversee this unified group, acting as a bridge to the new CEO, with Marieb reporting to him.
More than 2.5 billion Apple devices are active worldwide. Any change at the top affects pricing, feature roadmaps, and which categories get the next big investment.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported last month that Ternus has long sat in Apple's 'conservative camp' on speculative product bets. He opposed the now-cancelled Apple Car and was wary of the Vision Pro, drawing on his 1990s VR experience and viewing Apple's spatial computing push with far less enthusiasm than Cook.
Source: International Business Times UK
