Apple Inc has promoted Jeff Williams to chief operating officer – a position previously held by current CEO Tim Cook.
Williams joined Apple in 1998 as head of worldwide procurement. In 2004 he was named promoted to senior vice president of operations and played an important role in Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market with the launch of iPhone. He was also in charge of supervising developing of the Apple Watch.
Williams has reached Apple’s C-suite, which includes chief design officer Jony Ive.
“We are fortunate to have incredible depth and breadth of talent across Apple’s executive team. As we come to the end of the year, we’re recognizing the contributions already being made by two key executives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.
“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.”
Cook continued, “In addition, Phil is taking on new responsibilities for advancing our ecosystem, led by the App Store, which has grown from a single, groundbreaking iOS store into four powerful platforms and an increasingly important part of our business. And I’m incredibly happy to welcome Tor Myhren, who will bring his creative talents to our advertising and marcom functions.”
The tech giant announced a few other changes to its leadership team as well.
Johny Srouji has joined Apple’s executive team as senior vice president for Hardware Technologies.
Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, will expand his role to include leadership of the revolutionary App Store® across all Apple platforms.
Apple is also hiring Tor Myhren, chief creative officer of advertising agency Grey New York to become Apple’s vice president of marketing communications – around the first quarter of 2016.
The leadership changes come at a key time for the Cupertino-based tech giant. Since the iPhone was released last year Apple has become the most profitable company worldwide. However, there is growing concern that the company is relying far too much on its smartphone business – around two third of revenue comes from smartphone sales.
