Apple on Thursday announced a bit of a shakeup in the executive ranks, naming Jeff Williams as Chief Operating Officer. The company also announced Marketing head Phil Schiller will be heading the App Store across all of its platforms.
Williams joined Apple in 1998 as their head of worldwide procurement. He takes the number four spot in the company’s top executive ranks, behind CEO Tim Cook, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and Chief Design Officer Jony Ive.
Williams became vice president of operations in 20014, overseeing the Cupertino firm’s supply chain, service and support, and the company’s social responsibility initiatives. He will continue to oversee development of the Apple Watch.
“We are fortunate to have incredible depth and breadth of talent across Apple’s executive team. As we come to the end of the year, we’re recognizing the contributions already being made by two key executives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I’ve ever worked with, and Johny’s team delivers world-class silicon designs which enable new innovations in our products year after year.”
Phil Schiller will take over head duties of the App Stores from services head Eddy Cue, who will continue to oversee the iTunes Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Maps, iAd, iCloud and iWork apps.
Schiller will be focusing on strategies to extend the company’s ecosystem across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, alongside his traditional marketing responsibilities. Schiller now leads nearly all developer-related functions at Apple, in addition to his other marketing responsibilities including Worldwide Product Marketing, international marketing, education and business marketing.
Cook continued, “In addition, Phil is taking on new responsibilities for advancing our ecosystem, led by the App Store, which has grown from a single, groundbreaking iOS store into four powerful platforms and an increasingly important part of our business.
The iOS device-maker also announced that Tor Myhren is joining Apple from Grey Group, where he has served as chief creative officer and president of Grey New York. Myhren will replace Hiroki Asai, who earlier announced plans to retire after 18 years in graphic design and marketing communications roles at Apple.
In addition, Johny Srouji is joining the company’s executive team as senior vice president for Hardware Technologies. Educated at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, Srouji joined Apple in 2008 to lead development of the A4, the first Apple-designed system on a chip.
