JOHN TERNUS, named by Apple on April 20th as its new chief executive, is known to share many of the defining characteristics of Tim Cook, the man he is replacing: likeable, unflappable, a company man to the core. But in the midst of what could be one of the biggest technological upheavals in history, that may not be enough. The question is, can he also invoke the mercurial magic of Mr Cook’s even more illustrious forebear, Steve Jobs?
Illustration: The Economist/Getty Images (Getty Images)
Mr Ternus, Apple’s 50-year-old hardware chief, will take over in September, at which point the 65-year-old Mr Cook will become executive chairman after a remarkable tenure as Apple’s boss. Since he replaced Jobs in 2011, the company’s sales have quadrupled, to $416bn, and its shares have outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin (see chart). On his watch, Apple’s market value has soared from $350bn to $4trn (roughly $700m for every day of his tenure). Sales of iPhones are breaking records. Its services business, which includes app-store revenues, continues to grow by double digits annually. As chief executive, Mr Ternus’s first product launch later this year is likely to be a foldable phone, which Apple’s devotees have been eagerly awaiting. The transition is set to look picture-perfect.
Yet under Mr Cook, Apple’s success was more thanks to steady operational improvements, especially to its supply chain in China, rather than revolutionary products. The foundation stones of his tenure were innovations that date back to the Jobs era, such as the Mac, iPhone and App Store. These served Apple brilliantly in the internet age. But since the start of the artificial-intelligence era, with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, Apple’s response has been half-hearted. Mr Ternus will have to do better.
Nobody expects him to take Apple on the big-spending path of its big-tech rivals, which are splurging hundreds of billions of dollars apiece on data centres. But its early attempts to integrate ai into its products were an embarrassment. Its over-hyped “Apple Intelligence”, aimed at serving AI to users of Apple devices, was a flop when it was unveiled almost two years ago. Having suspended its own efforts to make foundation models, the company is now relying on the Gemini family from Google, a rival, to dig it out of its AI hole.
A first feather in Mr Ternus’s cap, even before he takes office, will be showing that a Gemini-powered Siri can behave less like a clunky automaton and more like a smooth-talking AI assistant when it is shown off at Apple’s marquee developers’ conference in June. In a sign that Apple is aware it has a problem, it has substantially reshuffled its AI leadership team in the past year.
Yet Mr Ternus’s elevation, and a powerful new role for Johny Srouji, who has helped lead Apple’s chip strategy, suggests the company is betting primarily on hardware rather than software to carry it forward, on the assumption that AI models will eventually become commoditised. “It seems like if I’m promoting the hardware guy to be CEO, I want innovation to come from the hardware side,” surmises Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, an investment bank.
Hard problems
When it comes to hardware, there are two courses of action Apple’s new boss could take. One is to make the company’s existing products so ubiquitous that they will almost inevitably become the biggest consumer interface for AI. The recent accomplishments of Mr Ternus, who took over as hardware chief in 2021, suggest he could lean in this direction. Consider the enthusiastic response to the iPhone 17, launched last September with Apple’s latest in-house chips, which has led to one of the biggest upgrade cycles in years. Or consider the roll out in March of the $599 MacBook Neo aimed at luring low-budget shoppers away from Microsoft-based PCs. Reportedly the Neo has sold out this month. The Mac mini, launched in 2024 as an ultra-compact PC without a screen, has also flown off the shelves in recent weeks because users find it ideal for running always-on AI agents such as OpenClaw.
Apple’s advantage in hardware is supported by its custom silicon. Its performance-enhancing chips make the Mac the computer of choice for the high end of the market, and the use of its iPhone chips in the Neo is now helping it to reach the low end as well, according to Ben Thompson of Stratechery, a newsletter.
If Mr Ternus does “nothing but keep the ship on course”, Apple could almost double its number of devices from 2.5bn globally to 4.5bn over the next 15 years, reckons Horace Dediu, a veteran Apple analyst. That would be a huge platform on which to run—and monetise—AI apps. As users subscribe to ChatGPT or other AI apps, “Apple will just take a cut,” Mr Dediu adds. By one estimate, Apple is close to generating $1bn in AI revenues so far this year via the App Store, despite having no flagship AI product.
Azeem Azhar, author of Exponential View, another newsletter, adds that to overcome bottlenecks in cloud-based AI, routine queries may be shifted to “edge” devices, creating a big opportunity for Apple. In Mr Azhar’s telling, the future will involve “a combination of the highly portable phone with the persistent desktop or server. Both play to Apple’s strengths.”
There is, however, a more radical path available to Mr Ternus, which is to develop a new “form factor” beyond the iPhone that is more suitable for the interactive nature of AI than doomscrolling on a touchscreen. Competitors are already trying to turn the smartphone into yesterday’s technology. Meta, the social-media giant run by Mark Zuckerberg, is selling millions of AI-powered smartglasses. Sir Jony Ive, the design guru who helped Jobs create the iPhone, has teamed up with OpenAI to develop a brand new gadget of unknown form. To keep up, Mr Ternus may have to reinvigorate Apple’s product line-up with a determination that eluded Mr Cook.
Apple’s Vision Pro virtual-reality headset, though an over-priced flop, may help the new boss develop Apple smartglasses. The company is also reportedly working on a wearable AI pin. Mr Dediu says that one of Mr Ternus’s main strengths may be his devoted following among Apple’s engineers, who have been pivotal to the firm’s success. “Ternus will come out as an engineer’s engineer,” he says. “He is hard-core. That might energise the teams.”
Even if Apple’s new boss revives its innovation mojo, he will have other problems on his plate. The company is in the process of reducing its reliance on Chinese manufacturing, but is not yet fully embedded into alternative production zones such as India and South-East Asia. At least Mr Cook, a veteran at navigating geopolitical tensions, is expected to continue doing so as head of Apple’s board.
But that means Mr Ternus will also have his predecessor looking over his shoulder. In the case of some transitions—such as Bob Iger’s brooding presence at Disney, after he first stepped down as the entertainment giant’s boss—that can be a liability. With luck, Mr Cook will be a more helpful force. Nonetheless, he leaves big shoes to fill. The old adage is that you don’t want to be the chief executive who follows a legend. In Mr Ternus’s case, he will have to follow two of them.
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