Apple has thrived for a decade on Tim Cook as CEO. That follows.

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Happy birthday, Tim.

It has now been exactly a decade since the great Steve Jobs finally left the post of CEO of

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handing over the reins to then Chief of Operations Tim Cook.

Apple lost the most admired CEO in the world, and yet the company didn’t miss a step. In Cook, Apple shares have gone from $ 12 per share to nearly $ 150; revenues have more than tripled; and, most importantly, Apple has continued to innovate, deploying from the Apple Watch to AirPods, along with a succession of ever-improving iPhones.

The announcement of Cook’s promotion to CEO a decade ago included a prophetic quote from then-President Art Levinson. “The board has full confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” Levinson said. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance and he has demonstrated reasonable talent and judgment in everything he does.”

Those 13 years are now up to 23, of course. And the overwhelming evidence is that Apple made the right call when it chose Cook to succeed Jobs in the first place.

Here is a report sheet on how Tim has been so far in his tenure as CEO.

Investors have been rewarded: The day Apple announced the change of CEO, the shares fell a few cents. I hope it wasn’t you. Since that day, Apple shares have appreciated nearly 1,200%. Another way of thinking: more than 92% of Apple’s current market valuation was created with Cook in charge. Or to put it another way, Jobs provided the vision and Cook came out and built the business.

The core performance has been fantastic: Street’s current estimates cause Apple to generate revenue for the September 2021 fiscal year of about $ 366 billion, 240% more than the $ 108 billion released during fiscal 2011. stock during the same period have multiplied by ten, and the free cash flow has more than tripled. And Apple has returned stacks of cash to shareholders through an aggressive share buyback program, reducing the stock count in the last 10 years by about 10 billion shares, or about 37%.

The company continues to innovate: One of Apple’s most frequent but uninformed criticisms is that the company hasn’t really done anything new since launching the first iPhone in 2007. That’s obviously silly. The constant parade of new and improved products remains at the heart of Apple’s history.

Under Cook’s watch, for example, Apple has introduced every generation of the iPhone from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 12 (and soon, the iPhone 13), a period in which the device has been transformed completely with new designs, better processors, cameras, screens and applications and much improved basic software, including last year’s first iPhone 5G.

Apple launched Apple Watch in 2015, AirPods in 2016, HomePod in 2018, a whole host of new services in 2019, including Apple Card credit card, Apple TV streaming service, Apple News + and Apple Arcade and AirTags in 2021 Spectacular improvements have been made to Macs and iPads, including the first Macs with processors designed by Apple. And this is an abbreviated list.

Cook is a masterful politician: Let’s not forget that Cook has shown a skilled hand in directing Apple’s public image. Amid widespread hostility to the latest administration’s tech giants, Cook developed a much better relationship with President Trump than other technology leaders, while maintaining the company’s important ties to China, where Apple has a huge customer base and crucial relationships with suppliers. Cook oversaw Apple’s largest acquisition – the $ 3.2 billion acquisition of the Beats headset in 2014 – and has managed to keep a close eye on his personal history, including being published as a gay man in a history of Time magazine, also in 2014.

That follows: Oh, that’s always the big question for Apple. What else can you do? Well, in a few weeks we will get new iPhones. But there will be more news after that, and not just new versions of Mac, iPad and other devices. It has been reported that the company is working on automotive technology and an Apple Car is possible. The company has used the Apple Watch as a starting point to expand its offerings in health and wellness. According to reports, Apple is working on virtual and augmented reality hardware. And it certainly has other things in the hopper that not even the rumor mill has learned. Perhaps the hardest question is how long Cook intends to stay in the lead. In November, he turns 61, the oldest CEO of the five megacaps in technology. Cook has not said when he plans to step down, but he has also said he will probably not be CEO when he turns 70. Apple survived Jobs ’transition to Cook, and will probably be fine when the next succession arrives.

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