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If 2026 is Tim Cook’s final year as chief executive of Apple, he will be going out in style. The Financial Times’ report that succession planning at Apple is now in high gear makes it seem increasingly likely that the pre-eminent consumer tech company will soon be under new management.
Strong demand for the iPhone 17 lifted Apple’s stock market value past $4tn for a while over the past month. With a strong tailwind from the huge stock buybacks that Cook instigated as one of his first acts as chief, the share price is up 20-fold from the day he took over in 2011.
But, with artificial intelligence threatening the biggest upheaval to the tech world in decades, Cook will also leave huge questions. His successor will need to demonstrate a stronger appetite for risk and a willingness to bet on a new vision for how technology can reshape people’s lives.
Cook’s tenure, which began four years after the launch of the iPhone, has been bounded by the smartphone era. Even though worldwide sales of smartphones peaked almost a decade ago, nothing new has come along to disturb the device’s centrality in consumer technology. Cook has played his hand well, building and reinforcing an empire around the iPhone with services and new gadgets such as AirPods and the Watch.
But impregnability isn’t assured. His successor will need to show that they can both co-opt AI to reinforce what Cook built while also harnessing its disruptive potential to ride the next consumer tech wave.
The botched launch of Apple Intelligence — key parts of which were delayed early this year — was worrying. How much that will matter in the long run is hard to tell. As the gatekeeper to more than 1bn iPhone users, Apple can pick and choose which large language models to add to its products. As long as there is little to distinguish between the LLMs and raw intelligence remains a commodity, the delay might not matter too much.
Apple Intelligence may yet redefine the experience of using a smartphone, with a Siri voice assistant offering a way to accomplish things on your phone with a simple request rather than tapping through endless apps. That might drive future iPhone upgrade cycles and give the device a new lease of life.
But there are obvious risks to taking a back seat in the AI revolution. If LLMs are at the centre of innovation, then acting merely as a rent collector while leaving it to others to define the next must-have digital experiences would put Apple in an uncomfortable position.
Also, if LLMs come to represent what is essentially a new operating system, they will have strategic importance. OpenAI recently showed a way for users of ChatGPT to invoke apps from inside the chatbot — a direct challenge to the iPhone’s App Store model.
A feature of Apple under Cook has been its remorseless expansion into all the important parts of the tech “stack” that defines its products, from the chips to the software. Acquisition of one of the leading AI model-builders might be necessary to keep that tight grip.
The bigger question is whether AI will bring the curtain down on the smartphone era, opening the way for new devices that suck away user attention, threatening Apple’s centrality in their lives. Exactly what form that AI-native hardware would take is unclear, but Cook has done little to shape it.
The Vision Pro headset represented his biggest gamble on a new device and a new way of interacting with the digital world, through what Apple called “spatial computing”. As a pure technology demonstration, it was impressive, showing off Apple’s command of a wide range of advanced components. But as a compelling vision of how mixed-reality headsets will change your life — the kind of thing that Steve Jobs excelled at — it was a flop. Instead, Meta has stolen a lead with a more lightweight, fashion-conscious range of “smart” glasses.
Cook’s Apple has also balked at entering what could become the biggest AI-enabled hardware market of all: robotics. Scrapping his company’s work on a driverless car has left Tesla, in the popular imagination, as the pioneer in consumer robotics, whether in automobile or human form. Elon Musk’s company’s self-driving technology is years behind schedule and humanoid robots may be beyond the capability of current technology. But Musk’s unmatched stomach for risk at least gives his company a shot at an early lead in the market.
Apple’s next chief will need to increase the scale of the company’s bets. Among the first jobs: convincing its shareholders, who have become accustomed to the iPhone’s steady profits, that it is time to look beyond Tim Cook’s gravy train.
richard.waters@ft.com
