Becoming CEO.
Steve Jobs stood down as CEO in August 2011, and sadly passed away just six weeks later. Before his death, Jobs personally selected Cook to take over as CEO.

Prior to becoming CEO, Tim Cook was 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.

While Steve Jobs was said to be the visionary, creating world-changing products such as the iPhone, Apple became the world's first trillion dollar company under Cook.

Leadership style.
Tim Cook's leadership style is described as democratic, one that lets the talents of all Apple employees contribute to the company’s success. It's been said he keeps an open mind, carefully considers his all options, and can convince other people to follow his lead.

As a result of Cook’s leadership style, members of his team often report feeling: more involved in the decision-making practice, encouraged to express their thoughts without fear, and rewarded for providing creative insights (Financhill).

It can most certainly be said that his leadership style is effective given Apple's increase in profits and valuation since he took over.

The first $1 trillion dollar company.
Apple under Cook has been a huge financial success, with the stock delivering a nearly 1,200% return over the past decade. If you had invested $1,000 in Apple the day Cook became CEO, the market value of your shares would be worth $12,970.28 today, according to CNBC calculations. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has grown from a $364.4 billion market cap to $2.45 trillion, becoming the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market cap in 2018, and hitting $2 trillion just over two years later.

The Apple Watch and AirPods, released in 2015 and 2016 respectively, are the two most notable new devices launched under Cook. Other key releases have been the annual upgrades to iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Cook has also boosted Apple’s profits through subscription revenue with services like Apple Music and iCloud storage. Apple’s services business, which includes the Apple News+ magazine subscription service and streaming platform Apple TV+, raked in $2.95 billion in fiscal year 2011, a number that ballooned to $53.77 billion in fiscal year 2020.

Products.
Let's take a look at the key products that have come out under Tim's leadership. Check out our list which features our top 3 products from each year Cook has reigned at Apple! 

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