Apple: the Tim Cook era comes to an end – the company that has become a money-making machine
Over the course of fifteen years, the outgoing CEO has achieved some extraordinary results. He is now handing over the reins to John Ternus, an engineer
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On 24 August 2011, when Tim Cook took the helm at Apple, dark clouds of fear hung over the Cupertino giant. Fears for the health of its founder, Steve Jobs, who would indeed die some six weeks later from pancreatic cancer. Until that moment, Jobs had been everything at Apple: founder and visionary, public face and innovator. So much so that his succession seemed a huge question mark.
Today, 15 years on, it is Tim Cook who is stepping down (with John Ternus taking the helm at Apple). But the figures surrounding the handover tell a story that not even the most optimistic had anticipated.
When Cook took over from Jobs (in a formal sense, as he had already effectively led the company on three occasions whilst Jobs was on sick leave: in 2004, in 2009 and from January 2011 onwards), Apple was worth just under 350 billion dollars. Over the past fifteen years, its market capitalisation has grown roughly tenfold and now stands at around 4,500 billion dollars.
Turnover follows the same trend. In the 2011 financial year, Apple recorded revenue of $108 billion; by 2025, this had risen to $416 billion. Another figure doing the rounds amongst analysts at the moment is even more telling: in the quarter ending in June, the company took in $109.4 billion – more than it had earned in the entire year that Cook became chief executive.
Clearly, beyond the figures, Cook’s fifteen-year tenure has also been marked by interesting innovations and failures. Take, for example, the Vision Pro venture, which did not work out and remains the most high-profile example of a misstep. But there is also the chapter on artificial intelligence, where Apple has arrived late and is relying on others. Instead of developing its own models, the Cupertino-based company is taking a wait-and-see approach to AI, investing just over 10 billion (compared to the hundreds of its competitors). Amidst all this, Cook’s final weeks have served to dispel any doubts, given that Apple has cut jobs in its AI and software divisions and raised the prices of Apple TV and Apple One subscriptions in the United States – decisions that are unpopular but strategic.
