Apple’s John Ternus will run one of many world’s strongest firms; the job is a minefield

Over his 15-year reign as Apple’s high banana, Tim Cook dinner has change into immediately recognizable, highly effective past creativeness, and exceedingly rich. Most estimates peg Cook dinner’s present internet price at roughly $3 billion, belongings that he amassed largely via performance-based fairness awards as Apple’s market cap has grown greater than 11x on his watch to roughly $4 trillion.

However the job comes with loads of baggage, too. Cook dinner has additionally needed to navigate two Trump administrations and one Biden administration – every with its personal posture towards Huge Tech, China, and regulation. Cook dinner additionally confronted down the FBI over encryption, spent years in court docket defending the App Retailer in opposition to accusations that Apple had turned the iPhone into an unlawful monopoly, and made compromises to remain within the Chinese language market that attracted a complete lot of undesirable consideration from human rights teams. Not final, Cook dinner watched the corporate’s most formidable {hardware} wager — the Imaginative and prescient Professional headset — bomb with customers. That’s saying nothing of AI, the place the end result remains to be unknown. Incoming CEO John Ternus inherits all of it.

Right here’s a stroll via a few of Cook dinner’s largest battles over time:

Absolutely all of us keep in mind that 2016 FBI encryption combat? After a mass taking pictures at a vacation gathering in San Bernardino, California, the FBI demanded that Apple assist unlock the gunman’s iPhone. Cook refusedarguing that encryption was the one significant countermeasure in opposition to exposing folks’s personal knowledge and that being pressured to interrupt it will set a harmful precedent. The standoff finally ended when the FBI discovered one other method in, nevertheless it cemented Apple’s id as a privateness firm and arrange years of pressure with governments all over the world. Ternus will inherit that id and the obligations that include it.

The App Retailer antitrust wars haven’t been a stroll within the park for Cook dinner, both. Epic Video games sued Apple in federal court docket over its requirement that apps use Apple’s in-app cost system and its 30% reduce of gross sales (and when the choose pressed Cook dinner on why customers couldn’t merely pay builders immediately at decrease costs, his answers did little to deflect her skepticism). Apple largely prevailed in 2021, with the court docket declining to name it a monopoly, nevertheless it was ordered to permit builders to hyperlink to exterior cost choices. It complied within the narrowest sense, charging a 27% fee on these exterior purchases (some low cost!), and courts discovered it in contempt. The Ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals upheld that ruling in late 2025, and after a rehearing request was denied final month, Apple is now making ready to petition the Supreme Court docket, which had already declined to listen to its prior enchantment. A decrease court docket nonetheless should decide what price Apple can truly cost.

The Epic saga is only one entrance in a a lot wider antitrust conflict. The U.S. Division of Justice sued Apple in March 2024, accusing it of unlawfully dominating the smartphone market by limiting third-party app and gadget builders — suppose competing smartwatches, digital wallets, and messaging companies — in ways in which make it tougher for customers to change away from the iPhone. A federal choose denied Apple’s movement to dismiss that case, which means it may grind via the courts for years. And simply this week, Apple revealed it faces a possible $38 billion high quality in India, the place regulators have discovered it responsible of abusing its dominant place within the app market and say Apple has refused handy over required monetary knowledge — a case difficult by the truth that Apple’s market share in India remains to be comparatively modest, round 9%, giving it an uncommon angle to contest the findings. Ternus inherits this combat mid-stream, with the App Retailer’s income mannequin below direct judicial risk.

China has been a continuing and more and more uncomfortable balancing act, too. Cook dinner constructed Apple’s manufacturing operation round Chinese language provide chains, making the corporate deeply depending on a rustic whose authorities grew each extra assertive and fewer predictable over time. He additionally made uncomfortable concessions to function within the Chinese language market — most notably removing VPN apps from the Chinese language App Retailer and storing Chinese language customers’ iCloud knowledge on state-controlled servers. Cook dinner proved adept throughout Trump’s first time period at insulating Apple from tariffs and commerce conflict dangers, partly by cultivating a private relationship with Trump – who remarked upon information of Cook dinner’s retirement that he’s “an incredible guy!” Apple has already signaled that Cook dinner will proceed to assist Ternus negotiate geopolitical terrain as government chairman — an acknowledgment that these relationships are tough and that Cook dinner’s institutional information stays extremely helpful.

But AI is probably essentially the most instant and unresolved problem that Ternus is being handed. Apple’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, formally leaves the corporate this month following numerous delays within the rollout of a extra succesful AI-powered Siri. Moderately than relying solely by itself fashions, Apple has turned to each Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to energy some Apple Intelligence options. Longtime market analysis analyst Bob O’Donnell told Reuters on Monday that Ternus’s largest problem will doubtless be “getting a greater AI story and providing collectively that depends extra on Apple’s personal capabilities and fewer on third events,” although some have argued that the corporate will look smarter in hindsight for ready out the costly competitors taking part in out at the moment amongst at this time’s largest AI outfits.

Final however not least, government turnover at Apple extra broadly is much less mentioned however significant. Ternus is inheriting a largely rebuilt management group following the current departures of a number of different Apple execs over the past 12 months of much less, together with its longtime COO, general counseland head of UI design. It’s a problem and a possibility that may require him to place his personal stamp on issues comparatively rapidly.

The via line connecting most of those challenges is that Cook dinner’s biggest talent was his capability to handle difficult relationships with governments and companions whereas holding the enterprise buzzing. Whether or not Ternus has that very same talent, or Cook dinner’s continued presence as government chair is supposed to cowl for any gaps there, might show among the many extra attention-grabbing questions of the transition.

A a lot scarier query hanging over Ternus’s tenure is whether or not the world that made Apple essentially the most helpful firm on the planet may truly finish. Many trade watchers consider AI brokers will change into the first method folks work together with companies, rendering the App Retailer and its 30% reduce a distant reminiscence. Couple that with the potential of compelling new {hardware} that erodes the iPhone’s grip on our lives, like no matter OpenAI has within the works, and Ternus may discover himself maneuvering via far more than advanced relationships and litigation.