00:00 Speaker A
Breaking news coming from Apple announcing a chief operating officer transition. Jeff Williams is stepping down from his role as COO later this month, and here with more, got Yahoo! Finance’s Dan Howley. Dan.
00:14 Dan Howley
Yeah, uh, Sabih Khan’s going to be taking over. Uh, previously the senior VP of operations, but I think the the broader thing here is that Jeff Williams was largely kind of seen as Tim Cook’s potential successor. Uh, he had done everything, uh, from lead operations, uh, to have the design team report to him, worked on health initiatives, the Apple Watch, everything from the iPhone to the iPod. Uh, he was in his 27th year, and it really did seem as though it was leading towards him eventually becoming CEO of the company. Now, not so much that he’s heading out the door. I think one of the things to consider is, uh, not only is this a major loss for the company, uh, but it also points to the number of kind of, uh, defections we’ve seen from Apple. This isn’t obviously a defection. It’s it’s retirement. But the the folks who have managed to kind of move out of Apple as of late, and it’s been a a huge number. On top of that, we just had meta scoop up their, uh, uh, head of foundational AI models. And so it it does feel as though Apple is in quite a transitory period where they’re going from kind of this relative stability with their, uh, you know, leadership to this time where they’re going to be transitioning to perhaps a different set of heads at the company. We’ll just have to see what that means for the future. Tim Cook, uh, the design team will now report directly to him. So it’ll be interesting to see how that all shakes out. Um, but yeah, I mean, a wild kind of, uh, piece of news on a Tuesday.
02:20 Speaker A
To your point, Dan, I think if you asked most people who they thought was going to take the reins, it would be Jeff. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the guy who’s running operations, knows the company inside out, tested veteran, I mean, you can argue, you know, top three, maybe top, maybe the second most important person there in Cupertino.
03:02 Dan Howley
I mean, what did Tim Cook do before he was the COO, right? I mean, he he helped develop the supply chain there. Uh, Williams kind of came in, continued on with that. And so, you know, I think that’s part of the larger reason as to why they thought, uh, why everyone thought that he would be the kind of go-to. But, you know, I mean, we’ll just have to see who among the the remaining leadership, uh, would be up there. Uh, you know, obviously, you have, uh, Joz, who’s who’s still there, Craig Federighi. You know, uh, uh, a dark horse, maybe, Craig Federighi. Um, yeah, I mean, he he could be the the person or or Eddie Cue, obviously, who is currently, uh, the, uh, SVP of services. Um, I mean, those are really some of the folks that I think, you know, really stand out. Federighi has that kind of pizzazz factor. He’s always out on stage. So it would be interesting to see him do that. Uh, but really we we just kind of have to see where they go now.
04:19 Speaker A
Exactly. Yeah. Greg Joz, Joz Greg. Software head. Yeah.
05:13 Speaker A
Big news on a Tuesday. Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it.
05:17 Dan Howley
Sure.
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