Tim Cook has stepped down as Apple CEO after 15 years at the helm, closing an era in which the company became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market value and later surged beyond $4 trillion.
Cook, who announced in April that he would leave the CEO role at the end of August, will remain at Apple as executive chairman. John Ternus, most recently the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, has succeeded him.
Tim Cook
(Photo: AP Photo/Annie Mulligan)
“As you know, I am not leaving Apple. But I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply,” Cook wrote in a memo to employees on his final day. “I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine, even as I remain completely at peace with my decision.”
Cook became CEO in August 2011 after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigned, six weeks before Jobs died.
Jobs had recruited Cook to Apple in 1998, when Cook joined as senior vice president for worldwide operations.
“Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone,” Cook wrote. “And that's the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up.”
“We have made it possible to leave our ‘dent in the universe,’ as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world,” he added.
Cook inherited a company already transformed by the iPhone, MacBook and iPad, but under his leadership Apple expanded aggressively into new products and services.
The company introduced the Apple Watch in 2014, entering the wearable technology and health market. Apple Pay also debuted that year, expanding the company into mobile payments.
Apple Music followed in 2015 as the company shifted away from the iTunes model toward subscription-based streaming.
AirPods launched in 2016 and became one of Apple’s most successful accessories, helping drive the growth of its wearables business. In 2019, Apple launched Apple TV+ and Apple Card as it continued expanding beyond hardware.
Cook’s tenure was also defined by a series of historic market milestones.
Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018. It crossed $2 trillion in 2020, briefly passed $3 trillion in intraday trading in 2022 and reached the $4 trillion mark in October 2025.
The company’s market value now stands at roughly $4.6 trillion.
When Cook took charge in 2011, Apple was worth about $350 billion.
Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of Cult of Mac and the author of six books on Apple, said Cook had faced an almost impossible task in succeeding Jobs.
Cook “had huge shoes to fill, but he's done so admirably,” Kahney told FOX Business, saying he helped turn Apple into one of the world’s most valuable companies while preserving its core identity.
“He's presided over a great run of products, with only a couple of missteps. Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Silicon – these are up there with the best stuff Apple has ever done,” Kahney said.
“Even the Mac, Steve Jobs' baby, has been boosted to new heights and is more popular than ever – look at the AI buying boom that the Mac is leading.”
One of Cook’s most consequential moves was the expansion of Apple’s services business.
Gene Munster, managing partner and co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management, said Cook’s “greatest business success was understanding that the iPhone was more than a device.”
“It was the window through which much of the world would experience the internet, and that created opportunities for Apple to make money well beyond selling hardware,” Munster wrote.
Investors initially questioned Apple’s growing focus on services, but that business eventually became a central pillar of the company’s ecosystem and profitability.
Munster said services became “part of the fabric that binds Apple's products together” and “transformed Apple's gross profitability” by lifting margins.
Cook’s legacy also extends beyond products and revenue.
Munster described him as a “geopolitical magic man” who pioneered a more direct approach to dealing with political leaders, particularly during President Donald Trump’s first administration and the U.S.-China trade dispute.
“Today, seeing CEOs regularly engage Washington seems commonplace. At the time, Cook's approach was unusual,” Munster said.
Cook managed to cultivate ties with the White House while also maintaining Apple’s crucial relationships in China and expanding the company’s presence in India and Southeast Asia.
His continued role as executive chairman is expected to preserve that diplomatic function at a time when supply chains and geopolitical tensions remain critical issues for Apple.
Ternus now inherits both the enormous scale Cook built and a series of significant challenges.
He has spent about 25 years at Apple and played a role in developing many of the company’s most important products.
His first major event as CEO is expected on Sept. 9, when Apple is due to unveil its newest iPhone. The company could also reveal its long-awaited foldable iPhone, potentially placing it in more direct competition with Samsung in that segment.
Apple will also face pressure to accelerate its deployment of artificial intelligence after rivals moved more aggressively in the field.
Cook, however, expressed confidence that his successor is ready.
He wrote that he takes “enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John,” adding that few people “understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.”
Cook leaves the CEO role after transforming Apple from a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars into a $4.6 trillion global giant, while broadening its reach far beyond the devices that defined it when he took over.