After the initial shockwave of Tim Cook stepping down as CEO of Apple later this year passes, the spotlight quickly shifts to John Ternus, Apple’s new incoming CEO from September 1, 2026. And Ternus definitely has his hands full from day one.
While there’s no doubt that Ternus inherits a big tech giant of epic proportions, one that’s still valued at over $4 trillion in market cap, there are several issues Apple’s already facing that he’ll have to deal with immediately.
Needless to say, his honeymoon is going to be short. And John Ternus is going to have his work cut out for him.
This is the giant elephant in the room for Apple, one that will need all of Ternus’ focus and attention, no doubt. That Apple is reportedly sending close to 200 Siri engineers for a week-long AI coding bootcamp just before WWDC 2026 is a sign of how bad things really are internally.
Apple’s former AI chief John Giannandrea stepped down in late 2025 in the middle of Apple’s Siri crisis, which resulted in Craig Federighi overseeing AI development at Apple, with Mike Rockwell (previously of Vision Pro) now heading the Siri team.
AI has been a persistent chink in Apple’s armour, and its inability to get onto the AI bandwagon has been startling to say the least. And while Apple struck a $1 billion Gemini deal with Google to enable AI-features into Siri and Apple Intelligence, the company is in serious danger of missing the AI bus altogether, at a time when consumers are being bombarded with AI everywhere. Needless to say, John Ternus needs to make a big and decisive impact in correcting Apple’s Siri and AI story quickly, with something tangible that wows everyone at WWDC 2026.
Ternus will also need to take a call on the shareholder class-action lawsuit that alleges Apple misled investors about its Apple Intelligence and Siri progress. While Apple has asked the US judge to dismiss the lawsuit back in February 2026, Ternus may have to settle cleanly on behalf of the company.
Another quick problem for John Ternus to fix is one that gnaws at company earnings. Maybe not as quickly as the rest of the computing world, but the memory shortage problem has reached Apple. The expanding memory crisis is sharply driving up the price of memory components, as AI datacentres soak up supply.
This isn’t an Apple-only problem, it’s an industry problem, one that Apple’s not immune from. For a hardware-first company priced on gross margins, this memory price hike impacts dearly. As the hardware guy, John Ternus is the most qualified CEO Apple could have picked for this fight. Needless to say, Ternus will need to have tough conversations with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, and possibly accept margin reduction on the iPhone 18 cycle and beyond. How it will land with Apple shareholders is anyone’s guess.
For anyone who’s paying attention, it’s clear Apple’s spatial computing push is stuck with Vision Pro at its helm. Apple has already slashed Vision Pro production and marketing push because of weak sales. John Ternus was in the hardware department at Apple when the Vision Pro shipped first.
As incoming CEO, Ternus will have to decide fast whether to go full steam ahead on a cheaper Vision headset or let it fade quietly. Either decision won’t be easy, and comes with its own set of admissions of Apple as the company reimagining and innovating on the next big thing in consumer tech.
Year after year, if you go through Apple’s earnings reports, one thing becomes clear: the iPhone remains Apple’s structural vulnerability in terms of company revenue concentration. Even though Apple has diversified its hardware product line, the iPhone is still king in terms of revenue. Just to give you an example, in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, iPhone sales were 59.31% of total Apple revenue, with $85 billion generated in a single quarter in Q4 2025.
Also read: Apple iPhone Fold may launch in Sept 2026: India price, camera, display and all other leaks
It doesn’t take a financial genius to suggest that John Ternus will need a genuine new category which is not another Vision Pro to capture people’s imagination and make them feel good about Apple the way Jobs and Cook did till about the 2010s. The fact that Ternus comes into the CEO hotseat as the hardware guy at Apple is a bonus, but he will still have his work cut out for him on this front.
For millions around the world, Apple products have always been associated with having a tell-tale design imprint that was both iconic and functional, while being understated. Something that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive are credited for imbibing in Apple’s hardware design language.
While Ive is still around, he has charted his own path independent of Apple, currently building an audio-based AI-native device with OpenAI that potentially competes with Apple’s own trendsetting hardware paradigm. How Ternus makes an impact on this front remains to be seen, but it’s definitely something for him to think about long and hard.
Apple went through an unimaginable transition when Jobs appointed Cook as the CEO some 15 years ago, and it led to a windfall in the company’s fortunes. There’s no reason why lightning can’t strike twice, as the baton gets transferred to Ternus from Cook. The next couple of years will be crucial in ensuring the incoming CEO doesn’t rock the cradle too hard, but at the same time solves key challenges plaguing Apple right now.