Tim Cook Gets Ready To Retire, Maybe

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 24, 5:58AM EST

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Cook May Be Remembered Well
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There are rumors that Tim Cook will retire. There are other rumors that he will not. He has led Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) since 2011, succeeding Steve Jobs. He is 65, which is a traditional retirement age.

Cook was not a logical choice. He had run logistics. His job was worldwide operations, ensuring the trains ran on time. They did, for the most part. There was a problem getting hardware out of China on time. There was a matching supply with demand. There was a need to get the best price for manufacturing. There was sourcing the best camera parts. the best chips, and light and strongest cases

He never took Job’s job. Jobs was a creative genius. He invented the Mac and iPhone. He built the early operating systems. He ran the software operations and design. He was considered the greatest CEO of the 20th and early 21st Centuries.

What Cook did was build more and more generations of iPhones. Each was better than the one before, so people kept coming. Eventually, Apple had 2.1 trillion devices worldwide, making it the most extensive “walled garden” on earth. And, he made sure there were reasons to stay inside the walled garden with Apple software products.

Apple’s stock rose 132% over the last five years. The S&P 500 was up about 88% over the same period. After keeping the top market cap spot off and on, it is at $4 trillion today, just behind Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) $4.3 trillion.

Although Cook could not increase sales for Macs and iPads. They were stagnant. New products like Watch were a failure financially. However, he did build a massive business which Apple calls Services, It is now almost 30% of Apple’s revenue. Its is almost everything Apple sells beyond its hardware

If, over time, Cook is blamed for problems, they will fall into two categories. The first is that he could not hold on to the top market share spot in China. Local companies overwhelmed its share. And, as of now, Apple does not have an AI product, which leaves it a year behind the industry.

On balance, Cook’s tenure will be considered successful

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.