Apple today announced that Jeff Williams has been named chief operating officer and Johny Srouji is joining 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 also announced that Tor Myhren will join Apple in the first calendar quarter of 2016 as vice president of Marketing Communications, reporting to CEO Tim Cook.
“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, in a statement. “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.”
Jeff joined Apple in 1998 as head of worldwide procurement and in 2004 he was named vice president of Operations. Since 2010 he has overseen Apple’s entire supply chain, service and support, and the social responsibility initiatives which protect more than one million workers worldwide. Jeff played a key role in Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market with the launch of iPhone, and he continues to supervise development of Apple’s first wearable product, Apple Watch.
In nearly eight years at Apple as vice president of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji has built one of the world’s strongest and most innovative teams of silicon and technology engineers, overseeing breakthrough custom silicon and hardware technologies including batteries, application processors, storage controllers, sensors silicon, display silicon and other chipsets across Apple’s entire product line. Educated at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, Johny joined Apple in 2008 to lead development of the A4, the first Apple-designed system on a chip.
With added responsibility for the App Store, Phil Schiller will focus on strategies to extend the ecosystem Apple customers have come to love when using their iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Phil now leads nearly all developer-related functions at Apple, in addition to his other marketing responsibilities including Worldwide Product Marketing, international marketing, education and business marketing. More than 11 million developers around the world create apps for Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS — as well as compatible hardware and other accessories, and customers have downloaded more than 100 billion apps across those platforms.
Tor Myhren joins Apple from Grey Group, where he has served as chief creative officer and president of Grey New York. Under his leadership, Grey was named Adweek’s Global Agency of the Year for both 2013 and 2015. As vice president of Marketing Communications at Apple, Tor will be responsible for Apple’s advertising efforts and will lead an award-winning team that spans a broad range of creative disciplines from video, motion graphics and interactive web design to packaging and retail store displays.
Tor will succeed Hiroki Asai, who earlier announced plans to retire after 18 years in graphic design and marketing communications roles at Apple.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats to all!
(Now make sure there’s at least some stock on hand for product launches, Jeff!)
Congratulations, Jeff !
Who was COO before Jeff, and where is he going to?
Also, who was Hardware Technologies executive before Johny, and where is he going to?
The previous COO was Tim Cook.
But it was four years ago.
I still wonder about Johnny.
I don’t know what that is, but so far AAPL is hammered down to bearish.
Hope Phil can straighten out the App Stores!
Lotta work needed IMHO
Maybe Phil will get the Mac App Store working. COO is generally proving ground for the next CEO. Also the person who will take control if something tragic happens to the CEO. Tim is not afraid to change people and jobs. This can be good and bad. I have read that one of the worst times for a company is when they change head quarters. Everyone is more worried about where thir new desk will be. The informal networks are changed. A bunch of employees will believe they were screwed. The customer experience suffers. Then once the dust settles thing get back to normal.
I’ve been complaining about Apple Marketing communications for years now (since Jobs leaving us).
Schiller is very good at opening new markets like China, and getting supplies to more than 60 countries but the Mar. Comm has been weak.
Note the Apple Watch launch, when the Apr 24 thing got confused, why didn’t marketing try to explain and smooth things with the press and customers? The instructions for Apple Music (the Guided Tours) came at the END of the first trial period forever branding Apple Music as ‘hard to use’ And the PR disaster free Bono Album (est. cost tens of millions) …
And where the Mac ads? Bright spot in apple earnings yet no serious ad campaigns since Mac/PC guy (66 different ads over 4 years) Not even cheap web ads. (IBM doing more in Mac marketing than Apple !). ETC.
(for aapl investors getting Mac sales up will lessen investors fear of the ‘one trick iPhone company which is killing the stock right now , for consumers it’ll get more Developers = more software).
And no I don’t believe any of the current Apple Ad campaigns although reasonably good have the same ‘cultural or marketing impact’ as the old campaigns like Mac/Pc Guy, 1984, Think Different etc which went beyond ‘marketing’ into public consciousness (those old ads masterminded by Jobs were talked about, won all kinds of awards, were discussed in Time magazine etc. and got into the syllabus of business schools).
Didn’t know much about Tor Myhren but Seriously Hope he can add something to Apple Marketing …
the difference between Mac/PC guy and the Samsung ads is THIS:
the Apple ads talked about the differences and weaknesses in the MACHINES (the mac PC guys played the COMPUTERS) , the Samsung ads made fun of USERS (the Apple USERS waiting in line etc).
2) at that Time Microsoft and Friends (Dell , HP etc) were into hard ass Anti Apple advertising themselves like ‘Lauren buys a Cheap PC. ‘ — which made even tech journalists deride Apple when even they didn’t check that many of the facts (pricing, component quality etc) were blatantly wrong.
I believe that in the end it was really stupid ad campaign which taught Windows shoppers to ‘look for Cheap’ which eventually destroyed all the profits in the PC hardware business which led to Dell being sold etc.
Msft is STILL attacking Apple with ‘Don’t fight” the Wedding ad etc while Apple has been polite.
PLUS stuff like:
Geekwire:
“Microsoft is getting in on the fun, too, with seven — yes, seven — new videos posted today on the Windows Phone YouTube page. All videos feature two fake Apple employees ridiculing aspects of the new iPhones during an internal meeting with a man who looks be either Tim Cook or the late Steve Jobs (you can only see the back of the man’s head).”
making fun of a dead Steve Jobs?
any of the mac PC guy match that?
3) ALSO Apple at the time of Mac Pc guy was way smaller before iPhone and an underdog.
still I agree that aggressive attack ads might not be Apple’s best bet today as the biggest tech giant around as humour can get misinterpreted.
4) My REAL POINT though is that Apple has Not put out ANY serious Mac campaigns at all, just a few isolated ads, pointing out Mac PC guy just to show the NUMBER of Mac ads in the past (one new ad a month). No ad campaigns right through the Win 8 fiasco. Maybe Apple is TOO POLITE now?
Some people should be seen and not heard. Others should be heard and not seen – like fat Phil.
Is Johnny Ive essentially gone now? Was the name change and less management tasks announced some months ago really code for his absence, in shareholder friendly wording? Is he still deep in design or left for more, well-deserved, family time?
I don’t hear much about him now. Love his work and impact at Apple.
If Williams was such a supply wizard, why are we waiting months for the Apple Pencil?