• Apple has named John Ternus as its new CEO
• He will take over from Tim Cook in September
• Ternus is taking over at a critical time for Apple’s AI strategy, notes analyst

Apple has named its current VP of hardware engineering, John Ternus, as its next CEO: He will take over in September from Tim Cook who, after 15 years at the helm, will ‘move upstairs’ to become executive chairman, allowing him to “assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world,” noted the tech giant in this announcement. 

Cook is handing over a company that, currently, is in great shape and which has grown significantly during his time at the helm. “Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has grown from a market capitalisation of approximately $350bn to $4tn, representing a more than 1,000% increase, and yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108bn in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416bn in fiscal year 2025,” noted Apple. 

It added: “The company has expanded its global footprint substantially, particularly in emerging markets; it is now in more than 200 countries and territories. Apple operates over 500 retail stores and has more than doubled the number of countries in which its customers can visit an Apple Store. During his tenure, Apple has grown by more than 100,000 team members and increased its active installed base to more than 2.5 billion devices.”

And there’s more. “Apple Services has been a major focus area of Cook’s, and during his tenure the category has grown to become a more than $100bn business, the equivalent of a Fortune 40 company. Cook was also instrumental in creating the wearables category at Apple, which now includes the world’s most popular watch and headphones, and which has served as the foundation for Apple’s remarkable impact on the health and safety of its users. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple also transitioned to Apple-designed silicon, enabling the company to own more of its primary technology and deliver industry-leading gains in power efficiency and performance that directly benefit users across its products.” 

On the face of it, then, Ternus’s main job when he takes over is to not try to fix a company that isn’t broken. 

But while Apple might still be one of the top smartphone companies in the world, with a market share of around 20% (depending on whose analysis you are reading) and still have an amazing brand, Ternus is taking over at a critical moment for Apple in terms of its AI strategy, notes industry commentator Richard Windsor in his latest Radio Free Mobile blog. 

He notes that while Ternus is inheriting a company “in very good condition and where everything is working well… it stands at a strategic crossroads” because “the world of technology is rushing headlong into AI, and for the last three and a half years, Apple has sat on the sidelines, making only one half-hearted and dismal attempt to join the fray. Apple is really struggling in AI,” according to Windsor. 

For now it doesn’t impact the company’s ongoing tech product sales business, but with its AI assistant Siri still a poor relation to its peers and with generative AI assistants now “extremely good at communicating using natural language while Siri continues to languish”, then Apple might find itself falling even further behind.

And while it turned to Google for help with the development of its AI foundation models earlier this year, Windsor doesn’t believe that “building a dependency on Google” is not going to help much if voice assistants and agents become very popular. 

Instead, he believes “Apple needs something high quality and in-house to defend the ecosystem it has built from the likes of Google and OpenAI,” and “this will require a big change in the way Apple thinks about AI, and I have long thought that the company would be best served with a fresh pair of eyes on the problem.” 

And while Ternus is a fresh pair of eyes, “given his background in hardware, I don’t know if he is the right person to work out where Apple fits in the new AI landscape.” 

Having said that, Windsor also notes that the Apple board has an excellent track record in picking its CEOs, but he, and no doubt many others, will be watching closely to see what Apple does in AI once Ternus takes over in September. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV