Tim Cook will stop being CEO of Apple next September

As of September 1, Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, the company said in a statement.

The company indicated that Cook’s transition to Ternus was unanimously approved by the board of directors.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be CEO of Apple and to be entrusted with the leadership of such an extraordinary company.. “I love Apple with everything in me,” Cook, 65, wrote in the statement.

The businessman stressed that Ternus has “the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with honor,” and called him a “visionary” whose contributions to Apple “are already too numerous to count.”

Ternus, 51, joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013.

In 2021, he was appointed Senior Vice President of this department.

According to the company, Apple’s next CEO played a “pivotal” role in introducing products like the iPad and AirPodsas well as across multiple generations of iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch products.

Specifically, Ternus’ work on Mac has helped make this category “more powerful and popular globally than at any time in its 40-year history.”

During his tenure as Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, The company introduced the MacBook Neo laptop, as well as the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17.

In addition, the American has led much of the company’s efforts in areas such as reliability and durability and has helped drive innovation in the design of materials and hardware, reducing the carbon footprint of its products, Apple said.

Before working at the Cupertino company, Ternus, who graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems.

For his part, Cook joined the technology company in 1998 and became its CEO in 2011, replacing the late Steve Jobs.

During his career as CEO, he has overseen the market introduction of multiple products, including new categories of Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro, as well as services such as iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple TV and Apple Music.

Under his leadership, the company has gone from having a capitalization of around $350 billion to one of $4 trillion, making it now the third largest listed company in the world.