Cook turned Apple into a $4T giant by not trying to be Steve Jobs

According to Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management, during his time running Apple, Tim Cook has been “like the president not of a company, but of a country.”

Cook’s predecessor Steve Jobs is considered one of the great product innovators in modern American history. But the role has become very different since Jobs stepped down shortly before he died of cancer in 2011 and Cook took over.

With his tenure as CEO ending on September 1, Cook’s legacy will be one of tremendous value creation — Apple’s market cap grew from about $350 billion to $4 trillion on his watch — even if the company’s products were more evolutionary than revolutionary during his 15-year tenure.

It’s no surprise that Cook, 65, is handing over the reins to longtime Hardware owner John Ternes. Several news outlets profiled Turnus in recent months, including The New York Times. a story going on Headlined in January, “The man who could become Apple’s next CEO”

Still, the move is happening “about two years sooner than I expected,” Munster told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” after the news broke Monday.

Munster said Cook has deftly navigated the Trump administration’s tariff policies, posing a particular threat to Apple because of how much the company relies on China to manufacture its devices.

Far from suffering, Apple’s stock has risen nearly 20% since Trump’s second White House term began in January 2025, and Cook hasn’t been at all shy about sweetening up the president’s nerves to charm the commander-in-chief.

In August, Cook joined Trump at an event in the Oval Office to promote a new $100 billion investment commitment by Apple for American manufacturing and gifted the president a gold and glass plaque.

“Thank you and thank you, President Trump, to all of you for putting American innovation and American jobs front and center,” Cook said at the event. This brings Apple’s total planned spending in the US to $600 billion over the next five years.

Investors have been handsomely rewarded for sticking with Cook.

Apple’s stock is nearly 20 times higher than when he took over, while the S&P 500 is nearly six times higher over that period. Most company analysts and industry experts attribute Cook’s success to his rigor and financial discipline rather than product innovation.

Rick Wargo, managing partner of executive search and leadership consulting firm Boyden, said, “Building on Steve Jobs’ visionary product leadership, Tim will likely be best remembered for his operational leadership – transforming and growing Apple globally, deepening its services platform, strengthening its supply chain, and making the company more operationally flexible and shareholder-focused.”

Revenue nearly quadrupled under Cook, reaching more than $400 billion in the latest fiscal year. Cook is known in Silicon Valley as an operations guru who improved Apple’s supply chain after joining in 1998 as executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations.

When he arrived, Apple was close to bankruptcy. Years later, he became one of Jobs’s top lieutenants and was promoted to the role of chief of operations in 2005, two years before the launch of the iPhone.

Cook has been benefiting from the popularity of the iPhone, which has dominated the growing smartphone market for nearly two decades. He is also credited with taking some important steps to diversify Apple’s business and take advantage of the company’s huge user base, which now stands at 2.5 billion active devices worldwide.

In 2014, Cook unveiled the Apple Watch and called it “the most personal product we’ve ever made.” Then in 2016 came AirPods.

In both cases, Apple was jumping into a very familiar category, but was able to charge a premium for a product that was primarily targeted at iPhone users and offered rich enhancements to existing offerings.

Annual revenue for Apple’s wearables category is projected to top $41 billion in fiscal 2022, more than 10% of total sales that year, and up from $25 billion three years ago.

But it’s been a difficult market to keep pace with the abundance of competition and new features only increasing. The company has failed to even turn it around The higher-priced Vision Pro is among the consumer hits, as virtual reality remains a niche market. While the base Vision Pro sells for $3,500 of meta quest 3s will start At $350.

Apple’s wearables business has been mired in decline for several years now, with revenue down 4% fiscal year 2025 Up to $35.7 billion, which is 8.6% of total revenue.

Reports are swirling about what the next wearable device could be for Apple — whether it’s smart glasses, a pendant, or something else. In any case, the company is now competing on the device front with renowned designer Jony Ive, who joined OpenAI last year when the ChatGPS maker bought his startup for more than $6 billion.

I’ve designed the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. He left Apple in 2019.

Profit-hungry investors are big fans of Cook’s push into services, which have far fatter profit margins than hardware. Apple’s gross margin has been stuck at 38% for a long time has been growing rapidly in recent years, reaching 48% in the latest quarter.

US government repeatedly blocked the harshest Chinese tariffs on smartphones The tariffs were waived and Cook told investors in mid-2025 that the company was able to rearrange its supply chain to import iPhones from India to the US, where tariffs were lower.