The announcement arrived in a week that gave Apple four storylines at once. John Ternus, the hardware engineering chief who has become a fixture on Apple’s product launch stage, was named chief executive, the company’s first change at the top since Tim Cook took the job in 2011. Cook will remain as executive chairman. A person familiar with the board’s planning said the succession had been prepared for months and that Cook intends to stay closely involved in strategy, particularly on regulatory and political matters.
Ternus joined Apple in 2001 and spent two decades inside its hardware organization. He helped design the unibody MacBook Air, then led the engineering team that carried the company through its transition from Intel processors to its own silicon, a shift that reshaped the economics of the Mac line. He became senior vice president of hardware engineering in 2021 and has since been the executive most often on stage when products ship. Analysts said the choice was the least disruptive available: an insider with product credibility, no visible internal rivalries, and a chairman who stays in the room.
The handover was not the only headline of the week. On Friday, Apple’s shares closed at a record, lifting the company’s market value above $3.3 trillion and past Nvidia to reclaim the title of the world’s most valuable company. The immediate catalyst, analysts said, was approval from Chinese regulators for Apple Intelligence. The approval clears the way for Apple’s AI features to launch in China using a combination of Alibaba’s cloud models and Baidu’s on-device models, ending months of uncertainty about the company’s largest overseas market.
The stock rose more than 8% over the week as investors weighed the approval and the succession together. “The market wanted evidence that the AI story was finally moving in China,” said one analyst. “The CEO news was the frame. The approval was the substance.”
The China deal has been a long time coming. Apple introduced Apple Intelligence in the United States in late 2024, when it also announced that ChatGPT would be available inside Siri. In China, the company could not rely on a foreign model provider, so it turned to local partners, confirming Alibaba as a cloud and model partner in early 2025 and adding Baidu for on-device capabilities. Until the approval, Apple’s Chinese users had no timeline for the features, a gap that hurt the company in a market where domestic brands have been gaining ground. Analysts said the approval removes a structural disadvantage and could support iPhone demand in the second half of the year.
The same day, Apple raised iPhone prices across Japan by as much as 11%, citing the yen’s slide against the dollar. The increase applies to the full lineup, according to the company. Japan has been one of Apple’s most profitable markets per phone sold, and analysts said repeated hikes during episodes of yen weakness risk pushing price-sensitive buyers toward Android alternatives. The move is the latest example of how currency moves now reach Apple’s price lists, a problem the company can manage but not eliminate.
Then came the letters. Apple has sent legal notices to more than 40 former employees who now work at OpenAI, accusing them of taking trade secrets and confidential technical material when they left, according to people familiar with the matter. The dispute began with engineers from Apple’s chip-design organization and has since extended into AI, where Apple builds its own models and services while losing people to a competitor offering top-of-market compensation. The letters demand that the former employees return company materials and refrain from using the information, the people said.
The timing is pointed. Apple held talks with OpenAI about using its models to power an upgraded Siri, and those discussions stalled, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple has said Siri will also be able to route requests to Google’s Gemini. The legal campaign is the clearest sign yet that Apple now treats OpenAI as a rival for talent and technology rather than a partner of convenience.
Taken together, the four threads describe the job Ternus inherits. The market-value record rewards a decade of Cook-era discipline: services margins, buybacks, and supply-chain mastery. The China approval opens the last large market for Apple Intelligence. The Japan price increase is the price of a currency the company does not control. The OpenAI letters are the cost of competing at the top of the AI talent market.
Analysts said Ternus’s first tests will come in the next product cycle. He inherits a lineup built around AI features shipping across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, a services business that now contributes a growing share of profit, and regulators in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing who follow Apple more closely than any other hardware maker. The transition also lands during the most intense competitive period in the company’s modern history, with rivals closing the gap in hardware and new entrants pressing from software.
The handover itself was conducted with unusual calm. There was no contested campaign, no departure drama, and no immediate change to the leadership team, according to people familiar with the transition. Ternus is expected to name his own senior staff over time, but the company has signaled continuity as the priority, a message aimed at employees, customers, and the supply chain alike.
Investors took the handover in stride. “Ternus knows the products cold,” said a fund manager who holds Apple shares. “The question is whether he can run the machine that makes them.” Cook, for his part, gets a chairman’s seat and a continuing role in the decisions that shape Apple’s public life. The company’s next chapter will be told by a hardware engineer who has spent 25 years building the products.
