Apple Inc chief operating officer Jeff Williams. — Bloomberg
NEW YORK: Apple Inc chief operating officer (COO) Jeff Williams is retiring as the company’s longtime No. 2, marking a major changing of the guard at an already tumultuous time for the iPhone maker.
Williams will step down as COO this month before retiring from the company later in the year, Apple said in a statement on Tuesday.
He will continue to oversee the design team, as well as manage health initiatives, until his departure.
Sabih Khan will replace Williams as COO, while Apple’s design team will shift to reporting directly to chief executive officer Tim Cook.
Khan, a 30-year veteran of Apple, joined the company’s executive team as senior vice-president of operations in 2019.
He took over management of the supply chain at that time, including procurement and manufacturing.
Bloomberg News reported last year that Apple had primed him to eventually succeed Williams.
Khan will continue to report to Cook and will likely add divisions like AppleCare to his existing operations.
When Khan steps into the new role, he’ll contend with challenges ranging from tariff costs to slowing iPhone growth.
Apple also is grappling with global regulatory scrutiny and has fallen behind in artificial intelligence (AI).
New AI-focused startups are working on hardware products that could displace the company’s iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices.
Williams, 62, was once considered a possible successor to the 64-year-old Cook, given his title and similarities to his boss.
But their small age gap, and Williams’ desire to retire relatively soon, shifted the company’s thinking.
Now, John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, is the most likely successor when Cook retires, Bloomberg News has reported.
“Clearly he wasn’t destined to be the Tim Cook replacement,” Bob Mansfield, the company’s former chief of hardware engineering under both Cook and co-founder Steve Jobs, said of Williams.
“He’s about the same age as Tim, so that wouldn’t make much sense. The operations team at Apple is really going to miss Jeff.”
Williams joined the company in 1998 and took the COO job in 2015.
He previously worked at International Business Machines Corp starting in the 1980s.
At Apple, he was known for crafting a supply chain that could handle hundreds of millions of devices a year while sourcing components from thousands of suppliers around the world.
He’s been Cook’s top deputy for more than a decade, overseeing the company’s supply chain and engineering for the Apple Watch. The executive also ran AppleCare customer service.
Williams has long been known as a key decision-maker for Apple, and his departure is one of the most significant in the company’s history. — Bloomberg
