Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple after 15 years at the helm of the company. He will be succeeded by Chief Engineer John Ternus, who previously led hardware development at the tech giant.
Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group, links Cook’s departure to the lack of significant achievements in the technology race and Apple’s substantial lag in artificial intelligence. According to him, the smartphone manufacturer is falling behind even its Chinese competitors in developing AI solutions, necessitating a change in leadership. The new CEO was likely chosen for his understanding of emerging technologies and his ability to implement them, Murtazin noted, commenting on Ternus’s appointment.
IT expert Sergey Pomortsev emphasized that while Apple maintained financial efficiency under Tim Cook’s leadership, it has largely lost its reputation as a technological visionary. In recent years, the company has focused primarily on optimizing its existing product lines rather than creating fundamentally new market categories. "In recent years, the company has been more about optimizing existing products than about creating new categories," Pomortsev stated. The change in leadership aims to restore the brand’s innovative potential and accelerate the integration of AI into consumer electronics.
Apple is also looking to significantly reduce production costs while developing its flagship iPhone 18. The company plans to keep the retail price of the device comparable to that of the iPhone 17, despite a substantial increase in the costs of RAM and storage modules. This cost-saving strategy is intended to maintain the brand’s market position amid a global rise in the prices of key components. The leadership will need to find a balance between the necessity for a technological breakthrough in software and maintaining the profitability of hardware products.
