How Tim Cook made Apple one of the world’s most valuable companies

(CNN) — When Tim Cook became Apple’s CEO in August 2011, he had big shoes to fill. His predecessor, Steve Jobs, was widely considered one of the world’s greatest innovators.

Now, 15 years later, Cook has catapulted the company to stratospheric heights by forging his own path. His successor, hardware engineering chief John Ternus, has a very different act to follow on September 1. Cook will be remembered for making the iPhone feel essential to everything from buying a coffee to listening to music, hitting the gym or paying a credit card bill. That’s all thanks to the web services and accessories Cook pioneered over the past decade.

Apple’s stock has soared by more than 2,000% during his time at the helm. The company also briefly reached a $5 trillion market capitalization in July, the second company to ever reach that milestone.

“(Cook) managed to scale the iPhone to a level that no one would have thought was likely or possible over that period of time,” said David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who wrote a case study on Apple and Tim Cook.

But getting there wasn’t just about making smart product decisions. It also involved navigating political relationships across the US and China – both of which are critical to Apple’s operations and its massive iPhone empire – at a time when relations have been tense between the two nations.

Cook is just as much “a statesman” as he was a CEO, according to Gene Munster, managing partner at tech investment firm Deepwater Asset Management who’s been following Apple since 2004.

Cook came into the CEO role with expertise in operations and supply chain management. But it was his mild-mannered approach, swift decisions and knack for negotiation that helped keep the iPhone machine running smoothly despite geopolitical challenges, experts say.

Ron Johnson, who oversaw Apple’s retail operations from 2000 to 2011, described Cook – then the company’s chief operating officer – as “intelligent” and “strategic” during weekly team meetings with Jobs and Apple’s executive team.

“He was perhaps the most thoughtful of the executive team members,” Johnson told CNN. “He would always listen first and speak when he had something to add.”

Under his leadership, Apple made a decision that helped it dodge the Trump administration’s sky-high tariffs. Under pressure to build its phones in America, the company instead promised to invest $600 billion to expand its US operations, including producing critical iPhone parts stateside.

Even during Trump’s first term, the president said Cook was one of the few leaders who personally called him.

“In terms of CEOs that Trump has come to respect, Tim Cook would be very high on the list,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management and a former White House advisor.

Cook pushed the company to diversify some production away from China while still appealing to Chinese consumers and leadership, which Munster said is a rare feat.

“I don’t know how you do that,” he said. “I don’t know if that dynamic makes sense.”

Still, the Covid pandemic and Trump’s tariffs illustrated how Apple’s reliance on China could be a problem. That’s just one of the hurdles that Ternus inherits.

There’s also the tense relationship with regulators in Europe, Apple’s second-largest market; the company was forced to make changes to how it runs the App Store in the region. Apple’s revamped version of Siri won’t launch in Europe because of the European Union’s rules.

Then there’s AI. The company increasingly faces pressure to catch up, especially after its last major product – the Vision Pro – didn’t live up to expectations. Meanwhile, an ongoing shortage of memory chips due to the AI race has forced Apple and other companies to raise product prices.

But Cook gave Ternus some advice during one of his last earnings calls as CEO: focus on making products that “enrich” the lives of customers.

“If you keep focusing on that and make your decisions around that, it will produce a great business,” he said in April. “And we’ll be able to build more products and do it all over again.”

The-CNN-Wire
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