Meet the Team Driving Apple’s Record-Breaking Growth

Apple posted its third-quarter earnings on July 27, and the results absolutely crushed Wall Street expectations.

Every one of Apple’s major product lines grew by over 12% on an annual basis, with iPhone sales increasing nearly 50%. Revenue for the June quarter was also up 36% year-over-year at a record $81.4 billion.

From secretive projects to streaming services, Apple has grown to the largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization. Take a look at the faces behind the products at Apple, and the leadership team it’s steadily built out for decades to keep reaching new growth goals.

CEO Tim Cook has been a mainstay at the company for 23 years, navigating the company through periods of near-bankruptcy to where it is today as one of the biggest companies in the world. Before he officially took over as CEO for Apple founder Steve Jobs in 2011, Cook was Apple’s Chief Operating Officer

Prior to joining Apple, Cook was a VP at computer company Compaq, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2002. He also spent 12 years at IBM, most recently as director of North American Fulfillment where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in North American and Latin America.

Cook’s current day-to-day revolves around overseeing internal operations for the organization that counts more than10,000 employees, while also regularly hosting Apple’s summits and being a go-to spokesperson for Apple’s society-bending announcements.

This past year, increased pressure has been placed on Cook due to high speculation over Apple’s secret autonomous car projects. In an interview with Kara Swisher for the New York Times, Cook vaguely hinted at the prospect of what an “Apple Car” could look like.

“The autonomy itself is a core technology, in my view,” Cook says in the interview. “If you sort of step back, the car, in a lot of ways, is a robot. An autonomous car is a robot. And so there’s lots of things you can do with autonomy. And we’ll see what Apple does.”

The Org identified the key players leading Apple’s “Project Titan,” its secretive autonomous car bet back in February. But electric vehicles aren’t the only thing that Apple has up its sleeve.

In January of this year, Apple appointed Dan Riccio, the longtime head of hardware engineering, to a secret project that would report directly to CEO Tim Cook. Riccio has been with the company since 1998 and has developed some of Apple’s most iconic flagship products, such as the original iMac, the 5G iPhone and the AirPods max. Riccio also previously worked at Compaq, where he was responsible for the mechanical design of its consumer PC products.

In a press release at the time of the promotion, Riccio called his work at Apple “the opportunity of a lifetime,” alluding to the secrecy of the project he is working on ahead.

Speculation ranges from touch screen laptops and autonomous vehicles to its forthcoming augmented and virtual reality products.

“After 23 years of leading our Product Design or Hardware Engineering teams — culminating with our biggest and most ambitious product year ever — it’s the right time for a change,” Riccio said. “Next up, I’m looking forward to doing what I love most — focusing all my time and energy at Apple on creating something new and wonderful that I couldn’t be more excited about.”

Overseeing its more visible products is Eddie Cue, SVP of Internet Software and Services. Cue is also a company veteran (he joined in 1989) and has dramatically expanded Apple’s footprint through his development of the iTunes store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008. Today, Cue oversees Apple’s content stores as well as Apple Pay, Apple Maps, Search Ads, iCloud and Apple’s productivity and creativity apps.

Though Apple officially shut the lights off on iTunes in 2019, its replacements — Apple Music, Apple TV and Podcasts — are all thriving parts of its business platform. Running things on the musical side is Oliver Schusser. A 15-year Apple veteran, Schusser ran the company’s international content divisions before taking over Apple Music. Schusser is responsible for Apple Music and International Content, in addition to Shazam and Beats.

Zooming in on the financial growth that Apple has accomplished this year alone, it would be remiss to not mention SVP and CFO Luca Maestri. As CFO, Luca oversees the accounting, business support, financial planning and analysis, treasury, M&A, investor relations, internal audit and tax functions at Apple. Luca joined in 2013 as VP of Finance and Corporate Controller and has worked closely with Apple’s senior leadership since his arrival.

COO Jeff Williams also plays a huge role in day-to-day internal operations at the company. He oversees Apple’s entire worldwide operations and customer service and support. Williams led the development of the Apple Watch in close collaboration with the design team and also oversees the engineering team responsible for it.