Apple’s board of administrators and senior executives have been accelerating succession plans for Tim Prepare dinner, sources advised the Monetary Occasions.
After serving as CEO for 14 years, Prepare dinner might step down as early as subsequent yr, the report stated.
Apple’s senior vice chairman of {hardware} engineering, 50-year-old John Ternus, is extensively seen because the most definitely successor, however no closing selections have been made but, sources advised the FT.
The engineer joined Apple’s product design workforce in 2001 and has overseen {hardware} engineering for many main merchandise the tech firm has launched ever since, in response to Ternus’ LinkedIn profile.
He has additionally performed a outstanding position throughout Apple’s most up-to-date keynotes, introducing merchandise like the brand new iPhone Air. Ternus had been rumored to be Prepare dinner’s potential successor, in response to earlier reviews.
The corporate is unlikely to call a brand new CEO earlier than its subsequent earnings report in late January, and an early-year announcement would enable a brand new management workforce time to settle in earlier than its annual occasions, the FT stated.
The succession preparations have been long-planned and usually are not associated to the corporate’s present efficiency, which is anticipating robust end-of-year gross sales, folks near Apple advised the FT.
Apple didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark and declined to offer a remark to the FT.
The $4 trillion firm is anticipating year-on-year income progress of 10% to 12% for its vacation quarter ending in December, fueled by the discharge of the iPhone 17 mannequin in September.
Ternus would take the helm of the tech big at an necessary time in its evolution. Though Apple has seen gross sales success with iPhones and new merchandise like Airpods over the previous couple of many years, it has struggled to interrupt into AI and sustain with rivals.
As a substitute, Apple has even spending considerably much less in AI investments in comparison with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft.
Apple has been criticized by analysts this yr for not having a transparent AI technique. And regardless of approving a multibillion-dollar funds to run its personal fashions by way of the cloud in 2026, it was reported in June that Apple is even contemplating utilizing fashions from OpenAI and Anthropic to energy its up to date model of Siri, reasonably than utilizing expertise the corporate has constructed in-house.
Its AI-enabled Siri, initially slated for 2025, might be delayed till 2026 or later attributable to a collection of technical challenges, the corporate introduced earlier this yr.
Apple has additionally misplaced numerous senior AI workforce members since January, a lot of whom have joined Meta’s AI and Superintelligence Labs throughout expertise poaching wars this yr. The exodus of Apple’s AI execs included Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s basis fashions and core generative AI workforce, who joined Meta with a compensation bundle reportedly price $200 million.
The corporate can be coping with elevated competitors from one in every of its most influential former staff.
In Might, Sam Altman’s OpenAI acquired startup io for about $6.5 billion, bringing in former Apple chief designer Jony Ive to construct AI units. The 58-year-old designer was instrumental in creating the iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
Prepare dinner, Apple’s former operations chief, turned 65 this month. He has grown the corporate’s market capitalization to $4 trillion from $350 billion in 2011, when he took over the CEO position from firm co-founder Steve Jobs.
Below Prepare dinner, Apple grew to become the primary publicly traded firm to succeed in $1 trillion in market capitalization in 2018—then it grew to become the primary firm to succeed in $3 trillion in market cap in 2022.
However extra just lately, its inventory worth has been lagging behind Massive Tech rivals Alphabet, Nvidia, and Microsoft, although Apple is buying and selling near an all-time excessive after robust earnings had been reported in October.
Apple has additionally handled tariff issues as U.S.-China commerce tensions have disrupted its provide chain.
Prepare dinner has beforehand stated he’d favor an inner candidate to interchange him, including that the corporate has “very detailed succession plans.”
“I really want the person to come from within Apple,” Prepare dinner advised singer Dua Lipa final yr on her podcast At Your Service.
