John Ternus Takes Over as Apple Chief Executive With the Company Behind in Artificial Intelligence

John Ternus became chief executive of Apple on Tuesday, with Tim Cook moving into the role of executive chairman under a transition the company announced in April that the board approved unanimously. Ternus, 51, joined Apple in 2001 on the product design team and later led hardware engineering, overseeing the iPad, AirPods and Apple Watch, CNBC reported. Cook will continue to handle relationships with policymakers.

Al Jazeera described what Ternus is inheriting as a company that leads the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence. That gap is the central strategic question he now faces. Apple's competitors have spent the past three years committing tens of billions of dollars a year to data centers and model training. Apple has spent far less, emphasizing processing on the device instead.

The appointment of a hardware engineer, rather than a services or software executive, signals which answer the board prefers. Apple's advantage has always been the tight integration of its own chips with its own products, and the company designs the chips used in every device it sells. Whether that advantage is enough against rivals that own both the artificial-intelligence models and the data centers running them is the question Ternus will answer through his spending decisions rather than through product announcements.