Cook will hand over the reins of CEO to Apple’s hardware engineering chief John Ternes on September 1 and will remain as executive chairman.
Published on 20 April 2026
Apple CEO Tim Cook is resigning from the job he inherited from the late Steve Jobs, ending a nearly 15-year reign that saw the company’s market value soar to more than $3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity.
The company announced this on Monday.
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Cook, 65, will hand over CEO duties to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternes, on September 1, while staying on as executive chairman of the Cupertino, California company. This is similar to the changes made by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Netflix’s Reed Hastings after ending their highly successful tenures as CEOs.
Although he never shook the perception that he lacked Jobs’s vision, Cook took advantage of the popularity of the iPhone and other breakthroughs made by his predecessor to take Apple to heights that seemed unfathomable when it was on the verge of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s.
“Becoming CEO of Apple and being trusted to lead such an extraordinary company has been the greatest privilege of my life,” Cook said in a letter posted on the company’s website.
Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of numerous products and services, including new categories such as the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, as well as services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple’s market capitalization has grown from nearly $350bn to $4 trillion, representing growth of more than 1,000 percent, and annual revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108bn in fiscal 2011 to more than $416bn in fiscal 2025.
Ternes, 50, an Apple veteran, became senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021. He played a key role in the introduction of several new product lines, including the iPad and AirPods, as well as several generations of products in the iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch.
Cook said in a statement, “John Ternes has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and respect. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years have already been immense, and he is without a doubt the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
As executive chairman, Cook will assist in certain aspects of the company, including connecting with policymakers around the world.
