Eddy Cue To Become Apple CEO, As Sculley Returns As Chairman

In a surprise announcement, Apple today said that Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, will retire at the end of August. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, will succeed Cook as CEO in early September. Cook will transition the CEO role to Cue in June and the balance of his responsibilities over the remaining time allowing for a professional and seamless transition. Arthur D. Levinson, chairman of Apple, announced the news, noting:

Tim will be greatly missed here in Cupertino. During his time, he worked decently as a caretaker administrator. In Eddy, we have found a visionary that will take the company in a new direction.

Before being named CEO in August 2011, Cook served as Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace. Prior to joining Apple, Cook was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing all of Compaq’s product inventory. Previous to his work at Compaq, Cook was the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics. Cue currently oversees Apple's industry-leading content stores including the iTunes Store, the revolutionary App Store and the iBookstore, as well as Siri, Maps, iAd, and Apple's innovative iCloud services. He is a 25-year Apple veteran and leads a large organization of amazing people. Cue played a major role in creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008. He also played a key role in developing Apple's award-winning iLife suite of applications. In his early years at Apple, he was a successful manager of software engineering and customer support teams. In another surprising move, Levinson announced his own retirement. On July 1, he will be replaced by John Sculley III as chairman. Sculley served as CEO of Apple from 1983 through 1993. Of his return, Sculley said:

It will be great to be back where I belong. I can’t wait to start working with Eddy, and the rest of the Apple team on awesome new products. In particular, I can’t wait to see what we can do with OS X and the entire Mac product line, which I believe, is where the future of Apple is.

Soon after Steve Jobs' death in 2011, Sculley reflected on his time at Apple. He called his 1985 firing of Steve Jobs a "terrible mistake." http://youtu.be/qfeLOaFJuLo Is Cue the right guy to head Apple? Update: April Fools'

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