LONDON (AP) — Apple's next CEO John Ternus is a company veteran who rose through the iPhone maker's hardware engineering ranks but until now has maintained a low profile.
Ternus will take over as chief executive in September for Tim Cook, who turned Apple into a $4 trillion tech colossus during his 15-year run after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.
Ternus faces challenges that will force him to step out of his comfort zone in hardware engineering. Beyond finding ways to keep Apple competitive in the artificial intelligence race, he will need to navigate supply chain questions and relationships with figures like President Donald Trump, who offered public praise for his predecessor on Tuesday.
Ternus, 50, has spent almost his entire career with Apple. He joined the company 25 years ago and has spent the past five years overseeing the engineering that underlies the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
It made him the prime contender to succeed Cook who on Monday, when Apple announced the change in leadership, hailed Ternus as “without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
Ternus worked on some of Apple's signature products under Cook, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro. He was also involved in the MacBook Neo, "arguably one of the most disruptive products” that Apple has released in a while, said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.
“This mentorship will undoubtedly ensure a smooth transition, and initially, I expect very few changes to the company’s strategy,” Wood said.
The appointment appeared to be carefully timed, following Apple's 50th anniversary celebrations and ahead of its annual WWDC developers conference in June.
The change also arrives at a pivotal time for the Cupertino, California, company. While Cook led Apple through an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity, Apple has fallen behind in the AI race. Apple has stumbled in its efforts to deliver new features built on AI, as was promised nearly two years ago.
“The challenge for the new CEO is really to make sure Apple is able to crack AI as the new user interface and reinvent human machine interaction," Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson said.
Wood says attention at WWDC will be on the new CEO's AI strategy, and what the company will do next after turning earlier this year to Google — an early leader in the AI race — to help make the iPhone’s virtual assistant Siri more conversational and versatile.
“A big strategic question is how far Apple will invest in building its own AI platform versus relying on other companies’ models and platforms,” Wood said.
Apple also faces a turbulent market amid geopolitical uncertainty, Wood said.
"The consumer electronics industry faces a perfect storm, with memory chip shortages and the war in the Middle East having widespread implications for consumer confidence. Apple will also need to decide how much it wants to continue its deep reliance on China for manufacturing,” he said.
Being Apple CEO will also require soft skills including developing relationships with important figures. Cook cultivated ties with Trump as he navigated the company through business challenges including Trump's trade and tariff war targeting countries in Asia, where Apple has extensive manufacturing supply chains.
Trump noted his relationship with Cook in a social media post on Tuesday morning, writing that “it began with a phone call” at the beginning of his first term, when Cook asked for help with “a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix.”
“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship,” Trump said.
Ternus is not well known outside of the Apple universe. He joined the company in July 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile, which does not have any posts.
Before joining Apple, he spent four years as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He graduated in 1997 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the swim team and for his senior project developed a mechanical feeding arm for quadriplegics controlled by head movements.
In a 2024 commencement speech to the university's engineering school, Ternus said he was intimidated when he first started working at Apple and wasn't sure he belonged. He learned to “always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room but never assume you know as much as they do.”
“There will always be new skills to master and new people to learn from,” he said.
Ternus said in Apple's announcement that he was "humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”
FILE - John Ternus, Apple's V.P. of Hardware Engineering, discuss the latest development for the iPad Pro during an event to announce new products Tuesday Oct. 30, 2018, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
FILE - Apple's John Ternus speaks during an announcement of new products at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Monday, June 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are wavering Tuesday as Wall Street weighs the latest round of profit reports from big companies with the lingering risks from the ongoing war between the U.S. and Iran.
UnitedHealth Group and other big companies showed they’re making even bigger profits than analysts expected. Oil prices, meanwhile, remained relatively stable as optimism seems to be sticking in financial markets that the United States and Iran will avoid a worst-case scenario for the economy, even with their war ongoing.
The S&P 500 fell 0.1%, coming off just its second drop in 14 days, and is hovering below its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 14 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:16 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was mostly unchanged.
UnitedHealth helped lead the market with a jump of 7.7% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the beginning of the year than analysts expected. It also raised its forecast for profit over the full year of 2026.
That’s big because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term. It’s a double-plus for investors when companies not only top earnings estimates but also forecast even better growth ahead.
Quest Diagnostics rose 4.2% after it likewise joined the fattening list of companies topping expectations for profit and revenue during the latest quarter. It also raised its forecast for profit for the full year.
They helped offset an 8.3% drop for Tractor Supply, whose profit and revenue for the latest quarter fell short of expectations.
Other signals are also indicating the U.S. economy may be doing OK despite sharp up-and-down swings for oil prices because of the war with Iran. A report on Tuesday morning showed that U.S. retailers made more money in March, the first full month of the war, than analysts expected.
Growth was even relatively stable for retail sales when not including those from gasoline stations.
“It’s become cliched to say that the economic hit will depend on the duration of the Middle East conflict, but that cliché does ring true,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 1.3% to $96.72 ahead of Wednesday's scheduled expiration for a U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement. Both sides are continuing to talk tough, but hope remains after both have signaled they will hold a new round of ceasefire talks in Pakistan.
Much of the tension in financial markets has focused on what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s coast that oil tankers use to exit the Persian Gulf. A long-term closure would keep crude oil pent up in the gulf and away from customers worldwide.
The price for a barrel of Brent oil has gone from roughly $70 before the war to $119 at times as worries have risen and fallen about a long-term closure for the strait.
On Wall Street, Apple slipped 1.5% after Tim Cook said he’ll step down as CEO on Sept. 1 and become the iPhone maker’s executive chairman. He’s handing control over to John Ternus, a company veteran who rose through Apple's hardware engineering ranks.
Amazon rose 1.8% after Anthropic said it signed a new agreement and is committing more than $100 billion over the next 10 years to AWS technologies to train and run its Claude chatbot.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were lower in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia. South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.7% for one of the world’s biggest moves.
In the bond market, Treasury yields gained ground. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.29% from 4.26% late Monday.
Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday. He's facing a tightrope walk, as investors want to see if he would maintain the Fed's independence from political meddling. During the hearing, he pledged to fight inflation even though Trump has been pushing hard for lower interest rates. Higher inflation typically leads the Fed to raise rates, or at least keep them unchanged, rather than cut them.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.
Specialist James Denaro works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A dealer walks past the screen showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks past the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer watches computer monitors at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer stands near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A dealer walks past the screens showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Trader Michael Milano, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
