Tim Cook has been the CEO of Apple (AAPL) for 14 years. During that period, the company’s market capitalization has exceeded $4 trillion, and its annual revenue has expanded to nearly half a trillion dollars. Those are successes by any measure. However, at 65, Cook is approaching the end of his time at the helm of one of the world’s most powerful businesses. According to the Financial Times, Apple is preparing for Cook to step down as soon as next year to give his replacement a chance to acclimate to the role before being dropped into major events like Apple’s WWDC software event. Replacing Cook, who has been at Apple since Steve Jobs hired him in 1998, will be no small task. But one name consistently rises to the top of the list of potential successors: John Ternus. Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, joined Apple in 2001 and has held his current position since 2013.
Apple’s presumptive CEO will almost assuredly come from within the company — Cook has stated he’d like to see as much — which helps the case for Ternus. Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster, a longtime Apple Watcher, agreed, telling Yahoo Finance that running Apple is akin to being the leader of a small country, and there are few people, if any, who could come in cold and run Apple. “It has to be an internal person,” Munster said. “It has to be a person who’s already groomed and aware of all the nuances of running the company. And so I think [Ternus] is a great pick. I think he’s going to do a fantastic job. Right pick, but he’s the only pick.”
Ternus has already made several high-profile public appearances during Apple’s yearly product events, including at the company’s latest iPhone launch. According to Munster, Apple likely began grooming Ternus for the CEO position roughly two years ago, though he disagrees with the Financial Times’s report that Cook will leave in the coming months. Instead, Munster said he believes Ternus will hold a co-CEO role alongside Cook before Cook finally retires. Whoever takes over for Cook will need to ensure the company keeps up the momentum it has seen under Cook. During his tenure, Cook oversaw the launch of a number of new product lines, including the Apple Watch and AirPods, pushed Apple to produce its own chips for its Mac laptops and desktops, and, most importantly, made the company’s Services segment a $109 billion-a-year business. But Cook has also faced some criticisms, including a lack of a true successor to the iPhone and the company’s current AI woes.
