Tim Cook reportedly has one thing he wants to do before leaving Apple
According to Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman, Apple CEO Tim Cook will probably stay at Apple through at least 2025. The 61-year-old executive first replaced Steve Jobs for a couple of years starting in January 2009. After Jobs returned for a brief period, his health deteriorated quickly and Cook took over for good in August 2011. Gurman notes that Cook, who is scheduled to receive a payout of Apple shares currently valued at $740 million, is supposed to receive the last of one million Apple shares in 2025.
Gurman says that the thought inside Apple is that Cook wants to remain Apple CEO to help guide the release of one more new product category. The product is expected to be AR glasses or Apple's belated response to Google Glass. While the company is expected to launch a mixed reality headset next year (AR + VR), the AR-based Apple Glass could be ready for release sometime in 2025 coinciding with the last payout of Apple stock that Cook will be due.
Apple CEO Tim Cook could end up staying at Apple through 2025
As a result, Gurman sees Cook turning in his key to the executive washroom at Apple (with a 5G smart toilet?) between 2025 and 2028. There are many critics out there who are quick to knock Cook but how do you follow a dynamic executive like Steve Jobs? In this writer's opinion, Tim has done a masterful job and while some say that Apple should be more innovative, he did make stockholders happy as Apple's shares have soared 1,100% since Cook took over the reins of the company, and Apple is now valued at $2.46 trillion.
In his weekly newsletter, Gurman goes through the names of possible replacements for Cook. Some of the names on the list are employees that you might be familiar with just from watching Apple's new product events. Those names include Craig Federighi, who might be considered a front runner if he wanted the job. You might remember Craig from the Face ID demonstration that failed during the unveiling of the iPhone X in 2017.
Other names mentioned include Apple's retail chief Deirdre O’Brien, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji, 32-year Apple veteran Eddy Cue, and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams. If you were to look at succession by title, Williams would be next in line to replace Cook. But being only three years younger than Cook, Apple would probably turn to someone else to replace Cook.
From 1983 to the present, Apple had five CEOs. Can you name them all? Well, surely you know Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. The third CEO was John Sculley. Jobs wooed Sculley away from Pepsico as he greatly admired Sculley's marketing campaign called "The Pepsi Challenge" which was a direct shot at Pepsi's long-time rival Coca-Cola. Reportedly, Jobs said to Sculley, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"
The return of Steve Jobs fuels an extraordinary comeback for Apple
Sculley took the Apple job and soon Jobs had wished that he hadn't. In 1985, with Mac sales declining, Sculley fired Jobs with support from Apple's board. But under Sculley, Apple was missing deadlines and suffered through some product flops. Sculley was replaced by Michael Spindler and then Gil Amelio, but nothing worked and Apple was weeks away from a Chapter 11 filing when the purchase of NeXT returned Steve Jobs to the company he co-founded.
Jobs introduced a series of products that turned Apple's fortunes around. There was the all-in-one iMac designed by Jony Ive. The iPod was introduced in October 2001 and sold 100 million units in six years. Two years later iTunes launched, and in January 2007 Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. The App Store opened for business the following year, and two years later, the iPad created a new category.
It was quite a turnaround as Apple went from strength to strength. And when the time comes for Tim Cook to step down, whomever gets the CEO job will have big shoes to fill.
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