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Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down from the job that 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 US during an iPhone-fuelled era of prosperity.
Cook, 65, will turn the CEO duties to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, on Sept. 1 while remaining involved with the Cupertino, Calif., company as executive chairman. That’s similar to the transitions made by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Netflix’s Reed Hastings after they ended their highly successful tenures as CEO of their respective companies.
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 during the mid-1990s.
Cook, who has led Apple since 2011, will become the company’s executive chairman, Apple said in a statement.
In a news release, Apple said the change was approved unanimously by its board of directors, adding that the move followed “a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process.”
“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said in a statement.
Cook said being Apple’s CEO has been the “greatest privilege” of his life, and he said that Ternus is a “visionary” and “without question” the right person to lead Apple into the future.