The past week marked Tim Cook’s 10th anniversary as Apple Inc.’s CEO. After a decade on the job and with the end of his reign closer than the beginning, it’s time to appreciate everything that he has done for the company as he made Apple reach new heights.
Tim succeeded Steve Jobs, and let’s admit it’s an impossible job filling in the shoes of one of the biggest visionaries of our time. Of course, Cook could never top Jobs’s legacy, but he successfully charted his path as Apple’s CEO.
He managed to grow Apple’s stock by more than 1,000% and turned the company into an operations powerhouse. The company under his leadership went all-in on custom technologies and expanded the product portfolio with new services, wearables, and a wider array of screen sizes.
However, Tim Cook will be turning 61 this November and will remain at the helm of Apple until 2025 when 1 million shares designed to keep him at the helm finish paying out. While many think that he can continue to be the CEO after that if he wanted to but seeing the reports it seems highly likely that he will stay. The belief inside Apple is that Cook just wants to stick around for one more major new product category, which is likely to be augmented reality glasses rather than a car.
According to reports, the Cupertino giant will be unveiling its mixed reality headset that blends AR and VR as early as next year. The new AR glasses are reportedly small enough to resemble classic frames are in development for a launch in the middle of the decade.
It’s easy to say that Cook might stay however, let’s not forget that he oversees a multitrillion-dollar empire with well over 100,000 employees, products that keep much of the world running, and a stock that often swings the market and retirement accounts of tens of millions of people. Apple is the company whose GDP is crossed by only a handful of countries in this world, that’s how big of an organization he handles.
However, many are now asking the question, as to who will take the helm of Apple after Cook retires. There are four people worthy of taking the seat from Cook and they are Williams, Joswiak, O’Brien, and Ternus.