Cook turned Apple into a $4 trillion giant by not trying to be Steve Jobs

When Tim Cook ran Apple, he was more like “the president of a country than a company,” said Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management.

Cook’s predecessor, Steve Jobs, is considered one of the great product innovators in modern American history. But the role has changed significantly since Jobs resigned in 2011, shortly before his death from cancer, and appointed Cook to replace him.

As his tenure as CEO ends on September 1, Mr. Cook’s legacy will be one of tremendous value creation — even if the company’s products were more evolutionary than revolutionary during his 15-year tenure, Apple’s market capitalization increased from about $350 billion to $4 trillion on his watches.

It’s no surprise that Cook, 65, is handing over the reins to longtime hardware chief John Tarnas. Ternas has been featured in multiple news outlets in recent months, with The New York Times running an article in January headlined “The Man Who Could Be Apple’s Next CEO.”

Still, the move is happening “about two years earlier than I expected,” Deepwater managing partner Munster said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” after the news broke on Monday.

Mr. Munster said that Mr. Cook had successfully manipulated the Trump administration’s tariff policy, which poses a particular threat to Apple because the company relies heavily on China to make its devices.

Rather than suffer, Apple’s stock price has risen about 20% since President Trump’s second term began in January 2025, and Cook has had no qualms about courting the president in ways that woo the commander-in-chief.

In August, Mr. Cook attended an event in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump touting Apple’s new $100 billion commitment to invest in U.S. manufacturing, where he presented the president with a gold and glass shield.

“Thank you to everyone and President Trump for putting American innovation and American jobs at the forefront,” Cook said at the event, adding that Apple’s U.S. plans for the next five years total $600 billion.

Investors have been rewarded handsomely for continuing to support Mr. Cook.

Apple’s stock price has increased nearly 20 times since he took over, while the S&P 500 index has increased about six times in that time. Most business analysts and industry experts attribute Cook’s success not to product innovation, but to his rigor and financial discipline.

“Building on Steve Jobs’ visionary product leadership, Tim will be remembered for his executive leadership that transformed and scaled Apple globally, deepened its services platform, strengthened its supply chain, made the company more resilient, and focused on its shareholders,” said Rick Wargo, managing partner at Boyden, an executive search and leadership consulting firm.

Sales nearly quadrupled under the Cook administration, reaching more than $400 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Mr. Cook is best known in Silicon Valley as the operations guru who transformed Apple’s supply chain after joining the company in 1998 as executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations.

When he arrived, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. A few years later, he became one of Jobs’ top lieutenants and was promoted to operations director in 2005, two years before the iPhone was launched.

Cook continues to benefit from the popularity of the iPhone, which has dominated the growing smartphone market for nearly two decades. He is also credited with making several key moves to diversify Apple’s business and take advantage of the company’s huge user base, which currently numbers 2.5 billion active devices worldwide.

In 2014, Cook introduced the Apple Watch, calling it “the most personal product we’ve ever created.” Then, in 2016, AirPods appeared.

In both cases, Apple was entering a very familiar category, but it was able to charge a premium for a product that primarily targeted iPhone users and offered a wealth of enhancements to its existing products.

Apple’s wearables division had annual sales of more than $41 billion in fiscal 2022, accounting for more than 10% of total sales that year and up from $25 billion three years ago.

However, competition is fierce and new features are only released incrementally, making it difficult to maintain momentum. The company has also failed to turn its expensive Vision Pro into a consumer hit, as virtual reality remains a niche market. The base Vision Pro sells for $3,500; meta Prices for the Quest 3S start at $350.

Apple’s wearables business is currently in a multi-year slump, with fiscal 2025 sales down 4% to $35.7 billion, accounting for 8.6% of total sales.

Reports are flying around about what Apple’s next wearable will be. Whether it’s smart glasses, pendants or other products. Either way, the company is currently competing with legendary designer Jony Ive on the device front. He joined OpenAI last year when the ChatGPT maker acquired his startup for more than $6 billion.

I designed the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. He left Apple in 2019.

Profit-hungry investors are big fans of Cook’s foray into services, where profit margins are much higher than hardware. Apple’s gross profit margin has long been stuck at 38%, but has been steadily rising in recent years, reaching 48% in the latest quarter.

And while the wearables business is shrinking, the service sector is suffering. Sales in fiscal 2025 increased by 14% to $109.2 billion, accounting for 26% of total sales. The service business includes advertising, cloud services, digital content, payments, etc.

Cook was able to increase spending with Apple by giving existing iPhone users Apple TV and AppleCare subscriptions, as well as the ability to purchase products and apps using Apple Pay.

“Apple’s core strength under Cook is its ability to continue to tightly integrate hardware, software and services into a seamless user experience,” said Nitin Seth, CEO of consulting firm Inced and former executive director of Flipkart. “It remains one of the company’s biggest differentiators.”

Mr. Cook is known as the mastermind behind Apple’s supply chain, architecting the company’s shift to manufacturing in China and its partnership with Foxconn about 25 years ago. Because of Apple’s established supply chain, the company was able to manufacture products at the scale and price needed to meet demand, especially when the iPhone was becoming popular.

As relations with the United States and China deteriorated in recent years, Mr. Cook began looking to diversify, focusing much of his efforts not only on Vietnam but also on India. Despite Apple expanding its manufacturing operations across Asia, it remains highly dependent on China.

“Substantially all of our hardware products are manufactured by outsourcing partners primarily located in mainland China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam,” Apple said of the risk factors in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But Cook has found a way to keep Apple thriving amid President Trump’s trade war.

The U.S. government suspended several of its toughest tariffs on China, smartphones were exempted from tariffs, and Cook told investors in mid-2025 that the company was able to reorganize its supply chain to import iPhones into the U.S. from India, where tariffs are lower.

All of this has to do with Cook’s relationship with the president, which was at times far from cordial during Trump’s first term. Cook, along with other tech executives, attended President Trump’s inauguration in early 2025 and donated to his inaugural fund. Apple is also one of the corporate donors to President Trump’s White House Ballroom project.

Cook’s commitment to building in the U.S. is key to maintaining President Trump’s goodwill

Last month, Apple announced an expansion of its U.S. manufacturing program, welcoming four new partners to its domestic supply chain: Bosch, Cirrus Logic, TDK, and Qnity Electronics. The companies will manufacture materials and components needed for Apple products sold around the world in the United States, and Apple plans to invest $400 million in the new program by 2030.

“At Apple, we believe in the power of American innovation and manufacturing, and we’re proud to partner with even more companies to produce critical components and cutting-edge materials for our products right here in the United States,” Cook said in a March press release.

—CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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