Apple Presses Shuffle On Top Management, Names New Chief Operating Officer

Jeff Williams has been described as “Tim Cook’s Tim Cook.”

By Annelise McGough

December 17, 2015

Apple has announced that Jeff Williams will be the company’s new Chief Operating Officer, a position that was formerly occupied by now-CEO Tim Cook. The company also announced that Johny Srouji will be promoted to senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, and Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, will assume responsibilities for the App Store across all Apple platforms.

“Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I’ve ever worked with, and Johny’s team delivers world-class silicon designs which enable new innovations in our products year after year,” said Cook in a press statement.

Williams started at Apple in 1998 and in 2004 was named vice president of Operations. Within the past five years, he has overseen Apple’s supply chain and was described by Fortune as “the guy that makes Apple run. Even simpler: He’s CEO Tim Cook’s Tim Cook.”

The moves may be designed to give executives more freedom to pursue other important tasks, Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research, told the New York Times. “It seems like Eddy Cue could have a pretty full plate with trying to negotiate TV rights at the moment, for example.”

The promotion of Srouji highlights the growing importance of chipmaking to Apple. Since joining Apple in 2008, Srouji has led the development of the A4 chip, which has powered iPads and a generation of iPhones. A graduate of Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, he’s been called the highest ranking Israeli in Silicon Valley by the newspaper Haaretz. Srouji was said to be closely involved with setting up Apple’s first R&D center in Israel in 2011.

Apple also announced the hiring of a newcomer, Tor Myhern, who will be vice president of Marketing Communication starting in the first calendar quarter of 2016. Myhern formerly served as chief creative officer and president of Gray New York.