Apple’s executive director, Tim Cook will step down in September and will be replaced at the helm of the company by John Ternusuntil now responsible for products such as the iPhone and Mac, according to a statement released this Monday (20).
Although Ternus was considered the favorite to succeed Cook, who will become executive chairman of the board of directors, This transition was not expected to occur so soon.
Cook came to Apple in 1998 and was named CEO in August 2011following the resignation of the iconic Steve Jobs, weakened by pancreatic cancer that would lead to his death a few weeks later.
Less charismatic than its predecessor, Cook proved to be an exceptional businessman, leading Apple down a path of unbridled growth.
Between 2011 and 2025, the company practically quadrupled its revenue and saw its capitalization multiply until today exceeding 4 trillion dollars (R$ 19.8 trillion, at current prices), being the third company in the world to achieve this feat.
Although critics accuse him of not having launched any product as transformative as the iPod or iPhone, Cook knew, in particular, how to boost the development of services.
This sector, which includes the App Store application store, music (Apple Music) and video (Apple TV) streaming platforms, as well as cloud data storage (iCloud), has become the company’s main growth engine.
However, Cook and his team missed the generative artificial intelligence (AI) turning point, marked by the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022.
Since then, Apple has lagged behind the big players in the industry and has not yet managed to fully integrate the new capabilities of AI in its main product, the iPhone, which continues to wait for a new version of the Siri assistant.
In electronic trading after the Wall Street close, Apple shares fell less than 1%.
