TIM COOK RETIRING: On October 5, 2022, it officially
became 11 years since Steve Jobs passed away. Many believed that Apple would lose their touch without
Steve and that things just wouldn’t be the same. And while that may be true, there’s no arguing
that Tim Cook has done a phenomenal job atleast from a financial perspective. Tim has been able
to grow Apple’s net income from $25 billion per year which is already nuts to $100 billion per
year. This has resulted in Apple stock growing over 10X and Apple becoming the world’s first
public trillion dollar company and eventually the world’s first three trillion company. Considering
this tremendous performance, no shareholder is really asking for Tim Cook to step down. But,
at 61 years old, it looks like Tim himself is ready to call it day within the next couple of
years. While Tim has yet to reveal an exact date for his retirement, he did give a couple of clues
as to when he may be departing. In April of 2021, Tim announced that he probably wouldn’t be running
Apple in 10 years and that he’s looking to oversee the launch of just 1 more product category. Some
have speculated that this might be the Apple car, but more than likely, he’s talking probably
talking about some sort of AR/VR headset. Rumors surrounding this headset have become rampant and
top analysts like Gurman and Kuo have suggested that this headset may be launched as early as
the end of this year. Even if that doesn’t come to fruition, it seems like the headset
should definitely come out within the next 1 to 2 years. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that
Tim would probably want to stick around for a few years after the launch to make sure everything is
going smoothly before he retires. So, that would put his estimated retirement date at somewhere
between 2025 and 2028. Combine this with the fact that Tim’s next stock compensation package will
finish paying out in 2025, and a retirement shortly after that makes a lot of sense. But,
this brings up the question, who will become the next CEO of the world’s largest company.
JEFF WILLIAMS:
Starting off the most likely choice, we have the second most important person at Apple:
Jeff Williams. Jeff is currently the COO or Chief Operating Officer of Apple and he has quite an
extensive background. In terms of education, Jeff is actually an engineer having earned a
mechanical engineering degree from North Carolina State University. He followed this up with an MBA
from Duke university. One of the first companies that Jeff worked for after graduation was IBM.
He joined the company in 1985 and spent the next 13 years in a variety of roles related to
engineering and operations. It wasn’t till 1998 that Jeff joined Apple as the head of Worldwide
Procurement. From there, he was promoted to being vice president of operations in 2004 and head of
worldwide operations in 2010. And finally at the end of 2015, he was promoted to his current role
as COO. Operations isn’t the only thing he takes care of though. After Jony Ive left Apple in 2019,
Jeff oversaw Apple’s design department as well. In terms of reasons why Jeff is a top candidate,
there’s a lot of reasons. First of all, he’s an engineer, and in recent history we’ve been
seeing a trend away from business CEOs and towards technical CEOs. Tim Cook himself is
an engineer and the same thing could be said about the CEOs of Microsoft, Google, Nvidia,
and AMD just to name a few. So, Jeff fits that perfect modern CEO mold of having a
lot of business experience but also having a lot of technical knowledge as well. We should
also note that Tim Cook himself was COO before moving up to CEO. Also, historically speaking,
76% of S&P 500 CEOs were promoted from being COOs. However, we have started to see a shift in this
trend. As of 2020, only 38% of CEOs were being promoted from being COOs. Nearly the same amount
were being promoted from roles as divisional CEOs or essentially vice presidents. Nonetheless,
if Tim Cook were to leave tomorrow unexpectedly, Jeff Williams would almost definitely be the one
to takeover. However, Tim isn’t leaving tomorrow. There’s still years before his departure, and this
alone reduces Jeff’s chances substantially. Jeff is only two years younger than Tim at 59
years old. If Tim were to leave in 2028, Jeff would already be 65 years old by then. And if
Apple wants another leader who can lead for more than 10 or 15 years, Jeff just doesn’t
seem like the best choice. But, aside from this one point, Jeff has everything going for him.
EDDY CUE:
Moving onto our next candidate, we have Eddy Cue who is the senior vice president of services. If
we’re talking about someone who’s loyal to Apple, Eddy is definitely the guy as
Apple has essentially been his entire career. After graduating from Duke university with a
bachelors in computer science and economics, Eddy joined Apple in 1989 at the age of 25, and he’s
been there eversince. Eddy is one of those guys who never worked on something that the average
customer really ever acknowledges. He wasn’t the one that designed the iPhone or the Air Pods or
Face ID or anything like that. But, he has been integral to the Apple experience since day one and
he has hit homerun after homerun. First, in 1998, he led development of the Apple website. Then,
in 2003, he led iTunes development, and in 2008, he led App Store development. Since then, he’s
also worked on Apple maps, iCloud, iMessage, Siri, and literally every other Apple service you can
think of. Here’s a full list of all the services that he’s overseeing right now. Basically,
if it’s a service and it’s from Apple, this guy has played some role in it. This means that Eddy
is the mastermind behind the Apple experience. And given that Apple is extremely focused on the Apple
ecosystem and preventing users from leaving it, Eddy could be the perfect choice for CEO. There’s
only so many iPhones that Apple can sell. And if we’re not already at peak iPhone, we’ll definitely
be there by the time Tim retires. So, Apple can’t continue to increase profits and revenue
just through hardware sales. To continue growing, Apple needs to increase revenue and profit through
services, and that’s exactly what they’ve been trying to do eversince iPhone sales peaked a
couple of years ago. But, despite that, Apple is still very much a hardware company as opposed to
a services company. Eddy, however, could change that and get Apple to that $10 trillion mark.
From a business strategy point of view, I think Eddy is by far the best choice. The next stage
for Apple is to transition into being a services company and there’s simply no better guy to lead
that than Eddy. Like Jeff though, Eddy does fall short in a few aspects. First of all, Eddy has
virtually no experience outside of services. He doesn’t have significant experience relating to
operations, finance, branding, or any of the other aspects that go into running a company. Also,
he’s not that much younger than Tim either coming in at 57. Likely the biggest drawback, however,
is that the Apple community as a whole isn’t the biggest fan of Eddy. There’s literally reddit
threads about why Apple should let go of Eddy. The general consensus seems to be that Eddy used
to lead great things, but that his current work just doesn’t quite stack up. If we look
past that though, Eddy is likely the best choice in terms of making Apple into a services giant.
GREG JOSWIAK: Next up, we have yet another Apple
lifer Greg Joswiak. Greg is currently the senior vice president of worldwide marketing. Greg is
one of those people who ended up doing something that’s completely unrelated from their educational
background. Like Jeff and Eddy, Greg is also an engineer at heart, but he’s never actually been
an engineer in practice. He graduated from the university of Michigan in 1986 with a computer
engineering degree and he was recruited to Apple directly from college. Originally,
he was hired to work on the Macintosh but it didn’t take him long to switch over to marketing
and that’s what he’s doing for over 30 years now. The first major marketing effort that he led at
Apple was related to the Powerbook. After this, he switched over to leading the marketing effort
of the iPod and eventually the iPhone. And just two years ago, after Phil Schiller stepped down,
Greg took on the role of senior vice president. Greg is kind of a tricky one to evaluate. He has
a technical background, he clearly knows how to market products, and he would likely lead Apple
as product oriented company. But, while this is the approach that has worked historically,
it’s not clear if this is the way moving forward. As we previously touched on, it seems that most
of Apple’s future growth lies within services and this is not something that Greg really has
experience in. To me, it seems like Greg simply fits in his current role much better. This
isn’t to say that Greg would be a bad CEO. He’d probably take Apple’s branding and marketing to
the next level and that could be helpful with new product launches like the AR/VR headset and maybe
even the Apple Car. But, it’s hard to see how Greg would diversify Apple’s revenue and take
them to the next level. And given that this is usually shareholder’s top priority, Greg probably
isn’t the top choice. But given that Apple is a product oriented company at their core and that
Greg is the most experienced Apple employee on the executive team, we definitely can’t write him off.
ODDBALLS: Before we get into the fan favorite, I thought
we should cover some of the oddballs that have a non negligible shot at the job. First we have Luca
Maestri who is the CFO of Apple. Luca has spent his entire career within finance which makes sense
given that he has a bachelors in economics and a masters in management. His experience includes,
GM, Nokia, Xerox, and of course Apple. If Apple was experiencing a cash crunch or debt crisis,
maybe Luca would’ve been a good choice. But, at this point, there doesn’t seem to be anything
going for Luca other than the fact that he’s also C suite executive. Moving onto our next oddball,
we have John Ternus who is the senior vice president of hardware engineering. John has
a bachelors in mechanical engineering from the university of Pennsylvania and he’s been with
Apple for a little more than 20 years now. He’s currently in charge of leading the engineering for
the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, AirPods, and more. John is definitely more of a product guy, but what
makes him especially interesting is his age. John is the youngest member of Apple’s executive team
coming in at just 45 years old. So, he could easily serve as CEO for 15 years or more. But
aside from that, nothing particularly sticks out about John. Next up, we have the only woman on our
list, Deirdre O’Brien. Deirdre is actually ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world
and given her position, that’s not too surprising. Deirdre is in charge of the vast majority of Apple
employees because she is the senior vice president of retail and people. She has a degree in
operations management and an MBA. And like many of the other people on this list, she has spent her
entire life at Apple. There’s no doubt that she’s qualified for the position, but with so many other
qualified individuals on this list, there doesn’t seem to be any key reason why she would get the
job over any of them. And finally, to wrap up the oddball list, we have Phil Schiller. Phil needs no
introduction as he’s one of the most recognizable Apple executives of all time. He’s been a part of
Apple’s keynotes for ages even during the Steve Jobs era, and he was probably a top contender for
CEO even in 2011. But, today he’s not that big of a contender because he’s essentially retired. He
stepped down as a vice president a few years ago and he holds an honorary title as Apple Fellow.
And at 62 years old, it’s unlikely that Apple will choose someone who’s basically retired.
CRAIG FEDERIGHI:
Someone else who doesn’t need an introduction is Craig Fedeirghi who has become synonymous with
Apple keynotes. Craig aka “hair force one” is by far the most charismatic and lively presenter at
Apple. And it seems that his charm has won over much of the Apple fanbase. I suspect
that he reminds them of the Steve Jobs days. In terms of qualifications, Craig is just as
qualified as anyone else on this list. Craig has a bachelors in computer science and electrical
engineering from Berkeley. He also has a masters in computer science also from Berkeley. Initially,
he got acquainted with Steve Jobs at NeXT where he led Enterprise Objects Framework. When Apple
acquired NeXT, he became an Apple employee, but he didn’t stick around there for long though.
In 1999, he would switch over to a company called Ariba where he would eventually become CTO. But,
Craig would eventually return to Apple in 2009 and has since become the senior vice president
of software engineering. If we’re talking about technical know how, I don’t think there’s anyone
on Apple’s executive team that has more techcnial experience than Craig. Not to mention, Craig is
relatively young for being an Apple executive. While he’s not as young as John Ternus, he’s only
53 years old meaning that he could easily serve as CEO for 10 years. Maybe the only thing that’s
not going in Craig’s favor is that he doesn’t have much experience outside of software, but
this is true of many tech CEOs, so I don’t think it’s much of a limiting factor. Now, Craig has
stated in the past that he’s not looking to become CEO, but honestly, that literally means nothing.
I mean what else is he supposed to say. Saying that he wants to be CEO would just make him look
power hungry and arrogant. So, ironically, saying that he doesn’t want the job is actually his best
play to get the job. Now, there is a subset of the Apple community that strongly opposes Craig.
They don’t think that the position of CEO should go to someone that they view as an entertainer
and a meme. But, you know, any CEO is going to have haters, and it’s no different with Craig.
APPLE’S NEXT CEO:
In the end, if I had to rank the candidates by likelihood,
I would have to go with the traditional choices which are of course Jeff Williams followed
up by Greg Joswiak. If Apple wanted to put a strategic twist on this and focus on services,
they might go with Eddie Cue. While these guys are no doubt the top choices today, given their ages,
I think there’s a good chance that Apple decides to go with someone younger by the
time Tim retires. And if this is the case, I think Craig has a strong shot at the job given his age,
charisma, and fandom. Personally, I think he’d bring a refreshing spin to Apple,
and I’d love to see him get the job. But that’s just what I think. Are you a fan of
Craig being the next CEO of Apple? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if excited to see
the next phase of Apple. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest
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