Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, XETRA:APC) shares climbed 2.7% as John Ternus officially became chief executive, succeeding Tim Cook.
Ternus, previously Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, was announced as Cook's successor in April 2026. Cook will remain with the company as executive chairman.
In an email to Apple staff on his first day as CEO, Ternus thanked colleagues for their support and praised Cook's leadership.
"I also want to extend my deep appreciation to Tim for sharing so much of his knowledge and experience during this transition, and more importantly, for everything he contributed to Apple over the years," Ternus wrote. "We're so lucky to have had a CEO who led with his values and with such decency and humanity."
Ternus said he was "honored" to take on the role and pointed to a major product launch next week, along with other projects already underway.
"I'm just as excited about what lies beyond that, including the incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven't even imagined yet that we'll dream up and create together," he wrote.
Ahead of his appointment, Ternus had already begun shaping the company's direction. Moves have included layoffs within Apple's Vision Products Group and the return of retired hardware engineering vice president Laura Legros to the company.
Bank of America analysts said in a note last month that Ternus's real test will be restoring a sense of technological surprise to a company too large for incremental excellence alone to redefine it. The bank said it expects much of Apple's core business to remain unchanged under Ternus, citing strong capital returns, potential leadership in AI at the edge, and optionality from new products and markets as reasons behind its rating.
BofA credited Cook with building roughly $4.5 trillion in market capitalization over nearly 15 years, a pace it calculated at about $32 million per hour, by growing Apple's installed base of devices and monetizing it through services such as Apple Pay, the App Store, Apple Music and Apple TV+.
The bank said Apple's next era will likely move away from the cloud-services model that enabled apps like Uber and Maps, toward one where devices themselves carry AI functionality and drive productivity. It cited wearables such as glasses, rings and AirPods with cameras, smart home automation, and virtual and physical personal assistants, including robotics, as potential areas of expansion.
BofA also pointed to Apple's departure from a net cash neutral objective as a signal the company could increase spending on research and development, capital expenditure and mergers and acquisitions, areas it said were not emphasized under Cook but that the pace of AI innovation may now demand.
Ternus is next expected to appear publicly at Apple's iPhone 18 Pro launch event on September 9.
