Tim Cook Will Step Down as Apple C.E.O.

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Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998 and was its chief operating officer under the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs.

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times

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Tim Cook Will Step Down as Apple C.E.O.

The longtime leader of the iPhone maker will be replaced by John Ternus, the company’s head of hardware engineering.

Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998 and was its chief operating officer under the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs.

Credit...

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

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By

Kalley Huang

and

Tripp Mickle

Reporting from San Francisco

April 20, 2026

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said on Monday that he would step down after nearly 15 years running an operation that rode the wild popularity of the iPhone to become one of the most influential and valuable companies in the world.

Mr. Cook, 65, will move into a new role as Apple’s executive chairman in September and be succeeded in the company’s corner office by John Ternus, the 50-year-old head of Apple’s hardware engineering.

The retirement of Mr. Cook will end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. During his tenure, Apple’s annual profit quadrupled to more than $110 billion, while its value ballooned more than tenfold to $4 trillion.

Mr. Cook replaced the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs shortly before Mr. Jobs’s death in 2011, having earned a reputation for perfecting the nuts and bolts of a global consumer electronics business. Apple has since defined how a modern technology company operates, with products assembled in a supply chain that stretches from the giant operations that Mr. Cook helped create in China to India and Brazil and a popular retail business that operates on five continents.

“He stepped into the world’s biggest shoes — the biggest shoes that anybody on the planet has ever had to step into — and he’s done an amazing job,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer from 2004 to 2014.

Mr. Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and rose through its ranks as he oversaw the development of Macs and iPads. He will be Apple’s eighth chief executive since its founding 50 years ago and its third since Mr. Jobs returned in 1997 to pull the company from the brink of bankruptcy.

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