Leadership change at Apple: CEO Tim Cook makes design a top priority

Apple 's top management is being reshuffled. Current Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams (62), one of Apple's most influential executives in recent years, will leave the company later this year and retire. In return, CEO Tim Cook (64) will be given more power and will also lead the iPhone company's key design team himself.

Williams has worked for Apple for 27 years. He led the company's Operations division, which is responsible for manufacturing Apple products while keeping costs low. Williams helped create one of the world's most respected global supply chains, launch the Apple Watch, develop Apple's healthcare strategy, and lead our world-class team of designers, Cook said in a company statement Tuesday evening.

This month, longtime Apple executive Sabih Khan (59), previously Senior Vice President of Operations, is set to assume a large part of the COO role. Khan already oversaw supply chains in his previous role.

However, Cook himself will take over the leadership of the company's legendary industrial design team, which is considered central to Apple's rise. After long-time head Jony Ive (58), father of iPhone and Mac design and now under contract with OpenAI , left the company in 2019, Williams took over the team. Now Cook is making design, which is expected to provide urgent impetus for Apple's future, a top priority.

Apple is currently under considerable pressure in terms of design and product development. Compared to Google or OpenAI, CEO Cook has not been able to come up with any AI offerings of his own. The expansion of the Siri software is considered delayed and unsuccessful; the integration of AI into Apple products has considerable room for improvement. Mike Rockwell , who was previously responsible for the Vision Pro headset, recently took over the Siri department. His predecessor , John Giannandrea , has moved to Google. And just this week it was announced that the chief AI researcher, Ruoming Pang , is also leaving Apple. He had previously researched basic models and is moving to the new AI department of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg (41) for an annual salary reportedly in the double-digit millions.

Since the beginning of the year, the company's market value has fallen by about a quarter; however, Apple is still worth $3.1 trillion. The departure of COO Williams, who was at one point even considered a possible successor to Cook, is already the second executive board change this year. At the beginning of January, longtime CFO Luca Maestri (61) handed over his CFO position to Kevan Parekh (53).

The change in the COO position also comes at a time when Apple's renowned supply chain is under considerable pressure. US President Donald Trump 's (79) tariff plans are hitting the company, which previously had primarily manufactured in China and East Asia and recently shifted parts of its production to India . In addition, Trump and White House officials have repeatedly put public pressure on the company, demanding that it relocate more production to the US .

So, there's a lot to do for the new COO, Khan. According to the company, he will lead the supply chain, product quality, planning, procurement, and fulfillment departments. He joined Apple in 1995 and has already worked closely with CEO Cook. According to the US magazine "Fortune," Cook once said during a meeting that a manufacturing problem was "really bad" – whereupon Khan got up and drove to the airport to fly directly to China.