No executive in American history has grown their company's market cap by more than Tim Cook. And I think it's time for him to step down.
It's pretty difficult to point to any shortcomings in how successful of a CEO Tim Cook has been. When Steve Jobs stepped down at CEO in August 2011, Apple was valued at $348 billion. Today, that number is over $2.5 trillion. Steve Jobs was a brilliant man, but we can't keep posthumously crediting him for all of Apple's success. Tim Cook's disciplined decision making and steady hand in the driver's seat are directly responsible for Apple's completely unprecedented meteoric rise.
Tim Cook has been so successful in his role not only because he is a brilliant thinker in his own right, but because his skillset perfectly fit the type of CEO Apple needed from the years 2011-2022. Tim Cook is an executive. He's perhaps the best business leader we've ever seen in being able to take a vision and build the operations and processes necessary to execute that vision perfectly. Thankfully, Tim inherited a pretty amazing vision when Steve Jobs stepped down. Apple had just announced the iPad 2, which truly became the tablet that defined tablets. The iPhone 4, one of the most iconic iPhone designs ever, was cementing Apple as the world's thought leader in mobile phones. Steve Jobs had just unveiled iCloud, which laid the foundation for Apple's eventual move to more cloud-based services. All of the raw material for the Apple we know today was in-place.
And so when Tim Cook, Apple's COO known for his supply chain sorcery and microscopic leash on vendors, took over for Steve Jobs, it made sense. His charge was to strategically scale an already massive consumer tech operation into the overwhelming behemoth it is today, and given Tim Cook's reputation in operations, he was the perfect man for this task. And it's hard to see where he could have done better.
But the Apple of 2022 isn't the Apple of 2011. The iPhone, the greatest cash cow in the history of business, has saturated the market and is flat-lining. Almost all of Apple's new hardware launches in the last decade — most notably AirPods and Apple Watch — have been offshoots of the iPhone (even if both products have also become wildly impressive platforms in their own rights). The iPad is still just the iPad. The Mac is in my opinion by far the most exciting product category for Apple right now, but it's still only a sliver of their revenue.
Apple doesn't need someone to execute a vision any longer; they need someone bold to lay out a completely new vision. And I don't think Tim's the man for the job.
For Apple to stay at the top of the tech industry in the next five years, it will need to have a few bold product strategy bets hidden up its sleeve. I have opinions on whether these bets should be AR glasses or a smart car or foldable iPhones, but for the sake of this decision, it honestly doesn't really even matter what the bet is. Very little about Tim's product strategy over the past decade (barring maybe the Mac's Apple silicon transition) is anything I would classify under the "bold product strategy bets" category, so it might be time for a new CEO that has a higher dosage of Steve than Tim to step in.
And that's okay. It shouldn't be a stain on Tim Cook's legacy to say the next phase of Apple's life will probably require a different type of leader in the helm. Just like you probably needed different things out of your parents at different phases of your life, it is natural for a company to need different leaders as it navigates different life stages too. If I were Tim Cook, I would rather leave on top when I've undeniably done a phenomenal job than wait a few years until the Board realizes I'm not the person to lead Apple into the next wave of innovation. You don't have to pioneer a revolutionary new product category to be a revolutionary CEO. Maybe Tim Cook just had to build the single most impressive business in American history and leave a healthy core business and a Mt. Everest of cash in the bank for the next person up.
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