Apple announced a handful of executive moves and shuffles today (Dec. 17).
The big news:
- Jeff Williams has been promoted to chief operating officer. Williams, who has played an increasingly public role, had been senior vice president of operations, in charge of things like Apple’s supply chain and the Apple Watch. Org-chart-wise, he’s following in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s footsteps, and has been referred to as “Tim Cook’s Tim Cook.”
- Phil Schiller, Apple’s long-time SVP of product marketing (now “Worldwide Marketing”) is adding the App Store to his responsibilities, which now include “nearly all developer-related functions at Apple.” Apple’s App Store has been a huge success for the company and has revolutionized software distribution, but it has been routinely criticized for bad user experience, and opaque, frustrating relationships with software developers. (The Mac App Store has been recently described as “rotting.”) It was previously under the responsibility of Eddy Cue, who runs iTunes and other software and services groups at Apple.
Apple also promoted Johny Srouji, who has led Apple’s crucial semiconductor and hardware efforts, to SVP for hardware technologies. And it announced that Tor Myhren would join from Grey, an advertising agency, to become VP of marketing communications.