John Ternus has officially taken over as the chief executive officer of Apple, succeeding Tim Cook, who ended a 15-year tenure leading the tech giant. Ternus, who took the helm on Tuesday, had been serving as the senior vice president for hardware engineering at the Cupertino, California-based company since 2021. When Apple announced the transition in April, the company said that Cook will move into the role of executive chairman.
Ternus is an old hand at the company. He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and climbed the ranks. He was appointed vice president of hardware engineering in 2013 and was promoted in 2021 to the senior vice president role that he has now moved up from.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Ternus had previously worked on virtual reality headsets at a company called Virtual Research Systems. Since joining Apple, Ternus has overseen the launch of a range of its most well-known product lines, including the iPad and AirPods. Given Ternus’s background in hardware engineering, analysts saw his appointment as a sign that the company, best known for its iPhone, is pushing to double down on innovation across its device portfolio.
It doesn’t refute the Tim Cook era; it marks a new stage in Apple’s history by intertwining AI with hardware, rather than treating AI as a standalone product,” Babak Hafezi, professor of international business at American University, told Al Jazeera. Ternus is set to hit the ground running in the new role. On September 9, Apple is expected to unveil its latest iPhone as well as a foldable device, a new product in its lineup.
The foldable phone market, although still niche, is a growing segment of the consumer phone sector that is currently dominated by Samsung, which launched it in 2019. Analysts forecast that Apple will make headway quickly. Apple is expected to ship 17 million foldable iPhones and reach 40 percent of the market share by the end of next year, according to IDC research, a tech intelligence firm.
Apple is also slated to launch a new version of Siri, its personal assistant, with the newest version of its iOS software planned for release this month. It is intended to be more conversational and provide more personalised content for individual users, including scanning personal emails and text messages. In a news statement announcing the new feature, the company used the example of using Siri “to find a restaurant recommendation a friend messaged them about, surface a hotel confirmation number from an old email”.
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