The Apple that we all know would not have been possible without the genius of Steve Jobs, but also without the direction of Tim cook. Since the current CEO of the apple company took the reins of the business, Apple’s value has multiplied by ten and made the company the first listed company to reach a trillion dollars in market capitalization. But this story could be about to come to an end. As reported by ‘Financial Times’, the company based in Cupertino (California) is «intensifying its efforts» in Cook’s «detailed» succession plans, which could hand over the baton this 2026. Among the candidates appears the name of John Ternussenior vice president of hardware engineering. Apple has had several high-profile changes this year to its executive team. Luca Maestri, the firm’s long-standing financial director, retired from his position at the beginning of this year. Likewise, Jeff Williams, Cook’s right-hand man, announced in July that he was leaving his position as chief operating officer. Other top executives, such as Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, have also assumed more responsibilities within the technology company. However, it seems a replacement unlikely to be announced before the company reports its fiscal first quarter 2026 resultswhich ends in December of this year and covers the always key Christmas period. According to sources consulted by the British newspaper, an announcement at the beginning of the year would give the new leadership team time to settle before the company’s two big events: the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and the launch of the next iPhone in September. The new team needs that time. It is needed because, although Apple has appreciated around 10% so far this year, its progress was, until recently, less than that of major rivals such as Microsoft, Amazon or Meta, reflecting the company’s difficulties in keeping up with the competition. The reason could be a «poisoned apple» for Cook’s successor: artificial intelligence (AI).
THE RACE FOR AI
As we have been telling you, the stock market is going through a phase of enormous volatility due to the fear of a technology bubbleespecially in securities related to artificial intelligence (AI). Not even Nvidia’s stellar results and the optimism of the American firm’s analysts and executives have served to chase away the specter of the crisis, which has left notable falls in most of the Silicon Valley giants. In all but one: Apple. And, while many of the ‘big tech’ companies are in an arms race to see who can get more and larger data centers to train their AIs, the apple company has adopted a different approach. An approach, perhaps, more modest. Google parent Alphabet expects to spend $92 billion on capex this year. Microsoft, for its part, expects to increase capital expenditures compared to the previous year after spending approximately $34.9 billion in its fiscal first quarter. In turn, Amazon raised its capex spending forecast to 125 billion for this year, while Meta has decided to invest more than 70 billion dollars this year and even more next year. Instead, Apple barely spends a fraction of these figures. In fiscal year 2025, which ended this past September, the company reported a ‘capex’ of 12,720 million, 35% more than the previous year. And while the company expects to spend more on investments this year, the numbers won’t be anywhere near those of its big Silicon Valley rivals. Instead of buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple contracts computing capacity and other technologies from external partners. Without going any further, journalist Mark Gurman recently told ‘Bloomberg’ that Apple will pay $1 billion a year to Google to use its AI, Gemini, to enhance and make Siri, the apple company’s assistant, «smarter.» On the other hand, when Apple builds servers for its AI software, the company uses its own Apple Silicon chips—not those from Nvidia or AMD—to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute. This is a cloud intelligence system designed for private AI processing. Its great value is that it only runs larger AI models when the AI built into its devices is not capable of responding to user requests. In addition, it prioritizes privacy, since it ensures that it does not store user data.
«I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we take advantage of both internal and third-party capacity»said Kevan Parekh, the company’s chief financial officer, during the fiscal fourth quarter results presentation. However, this is also where Apple’s biggest weakness lies.
HAS APPLE BEEN LEFT BEHIND?
Although the launch of Apple Intelligencethe Cupertino firm’s commitment to AI, excited at firstthe truth is that There are more disappointments than good news in your backpack. The AI system was due to debut in September 2024 with iOS 18, its launch was delayed by a month. And the deployment, which was to continue in 2025 with a completely new Siri, capable of better understanding conversations with the user and operating more flexibly, suffered a mishap: it was not good enough. It is scheduled for release in 2026.
According to Gurman, Apple’s internal data showed that this AI-based Siri was 25% less accurate than ChatGPT on most queries. Furthermore, this journalist maintains that Apple has invested late in AI due to the doubts of executives, who did not see AI as a priority. After months of silence, some of Apple’s top executives took the bull by the horns this summer. Federighi and Greg Joswiak, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, denied this summer that the new Siri and other Apple Intelligence features were «vaporware,» meaning a product that never reaches the market. «We don’t want to disappoint customers. We never do it. It would have been more disappointing to deliver something that did not meet our quality standardswhich had an unacceptable error rate, so we made what we thought was the best decision,» Joswiak justified, when talking about the delays. For his part, Federighi admitted that AI is too new and that, for this reason, Apple could not meet the expected deadlines. «When it comes to reliably automating capabilities in devices, no one is doing it really well right now. And we wanted to be the first. We wanted to do the best we could. And we had very promising initial results«, he stated. In a speech to employees, Cook downplayed these circumstances, ensuring that Apple has «rarely» been a pioneer. «There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone, there were many tablets before the iPad, and there was even an MP3 player before the iPod,» said the executive, before ensuring that Apple will be a fundamental player in the AI of the future. Although that may be without him in office.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END OR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY?
In his book ‘Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company’, former ‘FT’ correspondent Patrick McGee draws parallels between Tim Cook and the CEO of General Electric during the 1980s and 1990s, Jack Welch. Both executives multiplied the value of the company and generated value for shareholders, but their success exposed the company’s major weaknesses. And, while Apple conquered the world of hardware, its great rivals conquered opportunities that the Cupertino company overlooked. Google, Meta or the Chinese Xiaomi have created new products taking advantage of this technology, such as smart glasses with AI. OpenAI recently acquired the company of Jony Ive, former Apple chief designer, to build an AI device. While your competitors experiment and grow, Apple seems to be falling behind. In addition, there are great failures to his credit, such as his investment in virtual reality glasses Vision Pro, that have hardly been in demand, or the notorious cancellation of its electric car project after almost a decade of development, while Xiaomi managed to manufacture its SU7 in just three years. This, together with the refusal to invest in robotics during Cook’s mandate, makes ‘The Economist’ wonder if the company is a «Nokia in power.»
But not everyone thinks the same. Numerous analysts point out, like Cook, that Apple’s strength has never been innovation, but rather reinvention: The Mac reinvented the way we understand personal computers, the iPod changed music listening habits, and the iPhone popularized touchscreen smartphones. AI seems to be another turning point and Apple, according to experts, «only» has to do one thing: manage to integrate AI into its platform in a pleasant and intuitive way on its more than 2 billion devices. As Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, co-founders of the AI consulting firm Forum3, say, Apple «you don’t need to compete on model performance, you just need to integrate AI in a way that enhances the ‘Apple magic'». In recent months it has been rumored that Apple could buy Perplexitya native AI search engine, to hit the table and «help Apple move toward a world where voice search and AI are seamless, useful, and deeply integrated into iOS.» «Apple has the resources to achieve this. With $130 billion in cash and one of the strongest brands in technology, it could easily hire or acquire the talent it needs. So while Apple may seem to be lagging behind, it’s probably in the midst of a deliberate acceleration. You don’t need to build the best model or master AI as a research field. You just need to masterfully integrate this new layer into your existing experience. That’s what he does best«, they explain in a publication in ‘Fortune’. Be that as it may, what seems clear is that Cook’s successor will need to increase the magnitude of the company’s bets. In this sense, the strength of the results It will be the guarantor that Apple can have enough money—and the confidence of shareholders—to make its way in this new stage. Richard Waters, a Silicon Valley expert from the ‘Financial Times’, believes that among the first tasks of the new Apple CEO will be to convince shareholders, accustomed to the stable profits of the iPhone, that it is time to look beyond the «safe path» that Tim Cook has followed.
