Tim Cook is departing from his long-held role as Apple’s CEO — and a wave of top executives are heading for the exits as he does.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Phil Schiller, long the head of Apple’s App Store, stepped down from his position in recent days. Schiller has been with the company since 1987, with only a four-year break during that time. He took over the App Store in 2015.
However, Schiller won’t be leaving the company entirely. He will be staying on as an Apple Fellow, a role reserved for people who have made outstanding technical or leadership contributions to the company. In that role, he will be working on unspecified projects, although Bloomberg notes that insiders at the company believe that Schiller’s Fellow role is “a big step toward the executive ultimately retiring.”
Schiller shepherded the company through a lawsuit involving Epic Games over the App Store’s in-app fee system. Epic filed an antitrust lawsuit in 2020, claiming that Apple had created an illegal monopoly. The monopoly claims were ultimately dismissed, and the judge in the case largely ruled in Apple’s favor. However, the company was still ordered to ensure that app developers could link to external payment options. The legal fight is still ongoing.
As Schiller steps down, Apple plans to delegate day-to-day operations of the App Store to Carson Oliver, who has been at Apple for over 14 years and has worked in the App Store division for the entirety of that time. The App Store is also being transitioned from the marketing department to the services division, which is headed by Eddy Cue, Bloomberg writes. TechCrunch reached out to Apple for more information about the transition.
Schiller’s exit follows a series of other high-level departures for the iPhone maker. The company recently lost its chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who retired in December after 27 years with the company. The retirement of Lisa Jackson, vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, was also announced in December, as was that of general counsel Kate Adams. Jennifer Bailey, longtime head of Apple Pay, is set to retire in October after over 20 years with the company.
In June, Apple also lost Paul Meade, the Apple vice president in charge of the Vision Pro headset, who left the company to join OpenAI. In Meade’s absence, Apple has since downsized the Vision Pro team, which had lost around 100 employees as of two weeks ago.
As John Ternus takes the reins as CEO, he will be tasked with repopulating Apple’s ranks with a new generation of corporate leaders — among many other tasks currently facing the new chief executive.
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