Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has offered up a new report laying out Apple’s current succession plans for the company’s senior leadership roles. Gurman says Apple is actively developing a “new generation of leaders” who will eventually take over senior roles in the company.
Gurman says his sources tell him the company is aware of the aging of Apple CEO Tim Cook and other senior executives and is taking steps to ensure a new generation of leaders are in place when needed.
The report claims current Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams is set to take over as CEO upon Tim Cook’s retirement. Williams is “seen as the heir apparent” within the company, having run Apple’s global operations under Cook’s leadership. Williams is responsible for heading the development of the Apple Watch, as well as various health-based initiatives. He also has recently begun overseeing hardware and software design.
Perhaps the biggest reason Williams appears to be Cook’s heir apparent, id that he is much like Cook when it comes to “pragmatic” leadership style, as an “an operations-focused executive like Cook rather than a product visionary like Jobs or former design chief Jony Ive.”
As for other Apple executives, Gurman says the “smart money” is on the newly appointed vice president of iPhone marketing, Kaiann Drance taking over from Apple’s current marketing chief executive Greg Joswiak when he exits the scene.
Although Craig Federighi is still the youngest member of Apple’s executive team and likely won’t be going anywhere for a while, Gurman says there are folks in line to succeed him when the time comes. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, vice president of Intelligent Systems Experience, and Jon Andrews, who was named a vice president to lead CoreOS in 2019, are reportedly seen as the most likely candidates for promotion when the time comes.
If and when senior vice president Eddy Cure – who leads many of Apple’s services offerings – splits, Peter Stern, who joined Apple in 2016 from Time Warner Cable, is said to be the preferred replacement. Stern currently supervises Apple’s original programming efforts, Apple News, Apple Books, iCloud, and the company’s advertising platforms. He is reportedly leading the “Apple One” subscription bundles effort.
The report also mentions Priya Balasubramaniam as the leading candidate to take over from Sabih Khan as senior vice president of operations, John Ternus is expected to take over from Dan Riccio to head Apple’s hardware engineering division, and Sribalan Santhanam would take over from Johny Srouji as head of hardware technologies.
The report also discusses Apple’s contingency options in the case that a preferred candidate is unavailable when the time comes.