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Wednesday 22 April 2026

Apple’s new CEO meets the company at a crossroads

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Tim Cook is stepping down as the boss of Apple in September to be replaced by John Ternus, the current vice president for hardware engineering. Cook, who has led the company for 15 years, leaves big boots to fill. Under his stewardship, Apple grew from an innovative company worth $350bn to a behemoth with a market cap of $4tn. But it faces huge challenges. Apple has watched the AI race from the sidelines, and although it has grown its business services division, handsets still account for roughly 60% of its revenues. As a hardware geek who would spend hours arguing with suppliers about screw grooves, Ternus is an outlier in a tech world now dominated by algorithms.

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