Tim CookがApple役員会長へ、John TernusがApple新CEOに就任 Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman John Ternus to become Apple CEO

Apple has announced a long-anticipated leadership transition, with Tim Cook moving into the role of Executive Chairman and John Ternus, currently senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, stepping up as the company's next chief executive officer. The change marks Apple's first CEO succession in roughly 15 years, since Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011.

Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and has spent more than two decades inside the company's hardware organization, working on engineering for iPad, iPhone, Mac and AirPods, among other product lines. He was promoted to vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013 and to senior vice president in 2021, taking over from Dan Riccio. In that role, he has overseen the multi-year transition of the Mac lineup to Apple silicon and is reported to have led development on emerging product categories, including foldable devices that Apple is widely expected to introduce in the coming years.

Ternus has also become an increasingly visible public face for Apple, regularly anchoring product segments at the company's keynote events. Inside and outside the company, he is generally regarded as a technically grounded leader with deep credibility across the engineering ranks — a profile that echoes the engineer-CEOs who now run several of Apple's largest peers.

Under Cook, Apple grew from a roughly 350-billion-dollar company at the time of his appointment into the world's most valuable corporation, with a market capitalization that has at times exceeded three trillion dollars. His tenure was defined less by a single signature device than by a broad expansion of the business: the launch of Apple Watch, the rapid build-out of Services into a major profit engine, the move to in-house silicon, and the company's first push into spatial computing with Apple Vision Pro. Cook also navigated Apple through a complex period of geopolitical pressure, supply-chain diversification away from a heavy reliance on China, and intensifying regulatory scrutiny in the United States and Europe.

In his new role as Executive Chairman, Cook is expected to focus on long-term strategy, board governance and external relationships, including Apple's dealings with governments, regulators and major partners. The structure mirrors transitions seen at other large technology companies, where outgoing CEOs have remained involved at the board level while ceding day-to-day operational control.

The handoff comes at a pivotal moment for Apple. The company is in the middle of rolling out Apple Intelligence, its suite of generative AI features, and faces persistent questions about whether its on-device and privacy-centric approach can keep pace with rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. Apple is also widely reported to be preparing new form factors, including a foldable iPhone and updated Vision-class hardware, alongside an expanding push into the smart home and health-oriented wearables. A product-focused engineer at the helm may signal that Apple intends to double down on hardware-software integration as the primary lever for differentiation, even as software and AI services take on greater strategic weight.

The move also fits a broader industry pattern. Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Google's Sundar Pichai both rose from technical backgrounds to lead their respective companies, and Ternus's appointment continues that trend at the largest scale. It contrasts with Cook's own background in operations and supply chain, suggesting Apple's board may have concluded that the next phase of competition will be defined more by product and platform decisions than by operational scaling.

Several questions remain open. Apple has not yet detailed who will succeed Ternus as head of Hardware Engineering, a role that sits at the center of the company's product roadmap. Other members of the executive team — including software chief Craig Federighi, services head Eddy Cue, COO Jeff Williams's successor, and marketing lead Greg Joswiak — are likely to play key roles in shaping the new CEO's leadership structure. The exact timing of the transition, any changes to Apple's reporting lines, and how Ternus articulates his own strategic priorities in his first public appearances as CEO are likely to be closely watched by investors, developers and the broader industry in the months ahead.