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Apple CEO Tim Cook will leave the position he’s held since 2011 and turn the keys over to senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus on Sept. 1.

The move elevates the 50-year-old Ternus into one of the most important chief executive roles in Silicon Valley at a time when AI continues to roil the broader tech industry.

Apple’s decision to move forward with Ternus at the helm marks a shift for Apple as it enters its next major era.

The future CEO joined Apple in 2001 as part of the company’s product design team, working his way up to his most recent role in 2021. He’s a hardware person who initially worked on Apple’s Cinema Display.

He’s a contrast from Cook, who joined Apple in 1998 and served as the company’s COO before becoming CEO in 2011. Cook is an operations expert, which helped him turn Apple into the $4 trillion behemoth it is today. It also allowed the company to navigate the pandemic and subsequent supply chain crunch, as well as President Trump’s tariffs.

Now the company will be led by a product-centric executive with experience working on everything from the iPhone to AirPods. And the decision could provide a glimpse into where Apple is heading at a crucial time in its history.

“They need a different skill set,” Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman told Yahoo Finance. “I think they've acknowledged that.”

Read more about Apple's CEO transition:

Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down, to be succeeded by John Ternus

Everything we know about Apple's new CEO

7 big challenges for new CEO John Ternus

Investors are $4 trillion richer because of Tim Cook

Ternus’s product and device chops could signal Apple's desire to push its product portfolio in new directions as AI becomes an increasingly central part of consumers’ lives.

“A product-oriented leader with years of deep experience in Apple's hardware design suggests we might be entering a new era of devices (AI-enabled, wearable form factors including AR glasses, smart home devices),” BofA Global Research analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in an investor note.

“2027 could be a big product year (20th anniversary of iPhone), and we expect the transition to be smooth as other senior leadership changes at Apple have been in the past (CFO, COO etc),” he added.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is already working on its own smart glasses that will offer functionality similar to Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, including a camera and voice assistant.

The company is also reportedly developing AI-capable AirPods and an AI pendant.

“As an Apple user, I’m excited at the prospect that Ternus will inject new life into AI-first product development, creating AI-first products that we can’t live without,” Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote in a research note following Apple’s announcement.

Apple is still highly dependent on the iPhone. It’s the company’s largest business segment, accounting for $209.6 billion of the company’s $416.2 billion in revenue in 2025, and serves as a key entry point for users to subscribe to services including Apple Music+, Apple TV+, and iCloud storage.

But the company can’t rely on the smartphone, which debuted in 2007, forever, and Ternus will be tasked with defining its successor.

One of the benefits of Apple founder Steve Jobs passing the CEO title to an insider like Cook was that it allowed the company to maintain its culture. An outside hire could have upended Apple’s broader internal ethos.

“Steve Jobs’ most enduring contribution was not a product, but rather the creation of an organization capable of scaling dramatically while preserving its focus on building the best consumer tech products in the world,” Munster wrote.

“Cook sustained that culture while growing the company by 4x; and Ternus, after 25 years at Apple, is in a great spot to carry that forward. Staying true to Apple’s culture should allow Apple to pursue AI more aggressively without compromising on quality,” he added.

Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of client devices at IDC, said in a statement that Apple’s decision to appoint Ternus was a deliberate choice to “prioritize continuity and execution over radical change.”

Ternus will have to rely on that culture and more when he takes control of Apple later this year.

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Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on X at @DanielHowley.

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