Tim Cook Steps Down As Apple Chief Executive
Tim Cook has stepped down as chief executive of Apple, closing a 15-year run at the top while staying with the company in a new role. John Ternus takes over.
- Cook became chief executive in 2011, succeeding Steve Jobs
- He is not leaving Apple, describing it as stepping away from a role rather than an exit
- Announced in a message to employees on his final day as chief executive
- Elon Musk publicly congratulated Cook on what he called an epic career at Apple
What Tim Cook Told Employees
Cook said he was stepping away from a role he had “loved deeply” but would remain part of the company, writing: “As you know, I am not leaving Apple. But I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply.”
He credited employees for his success, saying: “The truth is, whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you.” He said his greatest pride lay beyond the figures in Apple’s annual reports, pointing to its culture and the belief that its products should make the world better, and invoked Jobs’ description of making a “dent in the universe”.
The Handover
Cook described his successor as “brilliant and wonderful and capable”, saying few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world in the way he does, and that he was excited about the company’s next chapter.
Cook separately posted that his title would change the following day but his affection for the Apple community would not.
Staying on after handing over the job is the part worth watching. It reassures the market and it complicates the successor’s authority, and which of those dominates usually depends on how visible the outgoing chief executive chooses to be.
What It Means For The Brand
Cook led Apple through a long expansion across products, services and global markets after taking over in 2011.
Apple is the rare company whose marketing has stayed recognisably consistent across a leadership change once already, from Jobs to Cook, which is itself an argument that the creative discipline sits in the institution rather than in one person. It is being tested a second time, in the same week the brand was inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame for exactly that consistency.
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