Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman has laid out in a new report, the potential successors for the CEO of Apple when Tim Cook eventually retires from the role, and other top executive roles at the company. It has laid out the plan that Apple is currently working on, in creating a younger generation of Apple leaders to fill the top positions in the future. It is a known fact that most of the top roles at the company are filled by people who are approaching retirement, with Craig Federighi being the youngest (51).
Recently, there has been some some shuffling around of the top leaders, with Apple veteran Phil Schiller moving to an Apple Fellow role, after serving as Vice President of World Wide Product Marketing since the 90s. Jony Ives departure also showed a future of which the founding leaders of the ‘new’ Apple (1998-present day) would need successors eventually.
The role of CEO is also reported to have a ‘heir apparent’ with Jeff Williams, Chief Operating Officer. He is described as being very similar to Tim Cook, in taking an operations approach to leading, rather than a product focus, that the likes of Steve Jobs followed.
Only time will tell if these roles will be filled by Apples preferred choices, with even others being highlighted if the choices that Apple has made were not to be available. The success Apple has made so far has been heavily due to the leadership currently in charge, so Apple seems to be taking some big steps behind the scenes to ensure that if they were to leave or retire, that their role were to be taken over as smoothly as possible.