By Adam Levine
A once leading candidate to replace Tim Cook as Apple's CEO announced his retirement Tuesday. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who has worked at Apple for 27 years, will be replaced in a "long-planned succession" by Sabih Khan, senior vice president of operations, who has been with Apple since 1995.
One longtime employee being replaced by another is standard operating procedure at Apple, and Apple shares were little moved in after-hours trading following the announcement.
The transition does raise fresh questions about Apple's CEO succession plan.
Williams became COO in 2015, and because Tim Cook became chief executive through that route, speculation regarding Williams as a successor began to bubble up. When in 2016 he started to lead the Watch presentations at Apple's annual events, the chatter got louder. In 2019 when Jony Ive left Apple, the design team began to report to Williams and the succession talk got louder still.
But that was six years ago. Cook, still only 64, doesn't look like he's going anywhere, which might have factored into Williams' motives. He was 61 in January, according to Apple's January proxy statement.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the company's succession plans.
Williams leaves Apple with 390,059 Apple shares, worth about $82 million, according to his latest insider filing in April. Like several top Apple executives, Williams got a base salary of $1 million with incentives that took his annual compensation as high as $23 million. Khan will likely step into that same formula.
Cook is young enough that succession doesn't have to be clarified immediately, but old enough that it leaves a cloud over Apple. Apple promotes from within, and the main senior vice presidents at Apple are Craig Federighi leading software, John Ternus in charge of hardware, Greg "Joz" Joswiak at marketing, and now Sabih Kahn. They are now the leading candidates. All but Khan are familiar spokespeople for Apple.
Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com
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July 08, 2025 18:18 ET (22:18 GMT)
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