Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris, Michael Acton, and Daniel Thomas, reporting for Financial Times (paywalled, but summarized by Reuters):

Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts, as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive as soon as next year.

Is this news? Perhaps. Coming as it did on a Friday evening is extremely fortuitous timing for Apple—too late to spook the markets, plus the weekend to digest the news: the stink of a planted story—with the “news” being the purported timing of Cook’s eventual announcement, which is implied to be as early as February, but with enough ambiguity for it to be as late as December 31, 2026, or well beyond that.

The piece has thirteen more paragraphs, but only five of them are relevant, as they reference FT’s supposed sources—the always reliable “people familiar with discussions”:

Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins at the $4tn company after more than 14 years.

A planned transition for any CEO takes time, especially so for the longest-running CEO of one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Apple has been planning for Cook’s departure since Cook became CEO. As the report notes, Cook turned 65 this month. Of course Apple is “intensifying” its preparation as their CEO hits the traditional retirement age in the U.S. That’s just prudent. To do otherwise would be corporate malpractice.

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook’s most likely successor, although no final decisions have been made, these people said.

Ternus has been seen as a possible candidate since at least early 2024, and more so since Jeff Williams announced his retirement in July. Are “these people” sharing new internal insight on Ternus’ likelihood of succession, or merely parroting the existing speculation? (Perhaps “these people” are merely saying “no final decisions have been made” and the rest is just FT fluff?)

People close to Apple say the long-planned transition is not related to the company’s current performance, ahead of what is expected to be a blockbuster end-of-year sales period for the iPhone.

So this isn’t a “leave while the stock is at an all-time high with even more good news to come” scenario? Got it.

The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period.

An announcement early in the year would give its new leadership team time to settle in ahead of its big annual keynote events, its developer conference in June and its iPhone launch in September, the people said.

I’ve included both paragraphs here because this seems to be the point of the piece, laundered through FT’s obfuscation machine. Taken together, they suggest an announcement could come as early as February. That would be huge news, if true.

These people said that although preparations have intensified, the timing of any announcement could change.

This, along with the lede’s “as soon as next year” language, provides that necessary ambiguity should the transition happen later than FT implies.

This report could be a scoop, a PR plant, or the entire piece could be based on a few people setting up a WebEx call and ordering pizza.

When Williams announced his retirement, I wondered “if this makes it less likely Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO in the near-term” because “Apple usually only does one or two of these big executive transitions a year,” so I’d be surprised by an early-2026 transition. I’d also be surprised if Cook chose to leave before Apple’s 50th anniversary in April (or even before the 20th anniversary iPhone in 2027). But perhaps starting “Apple’s next 50 years” with a new CEO is justification enough.

One final thought:

Cook has voiced his preference for an internal candidate to be chosen as his replacement, saying the company has “very detailed succession plans”.

Cook hasn’t merely “voiced his preference” here; he’s telling us what will happen. There is zero chance—none—that Apple replaces him with someone from outside Apple. When John Siracusa called for new leadership at Apple earlier this year, I wrote:

[…] any change at the top will come from within: today’s Apple is institutionally averse to bringing in an external CEO, so someone on that leadership page is Apple’s next CEO.

I stand by that. There are two reasons:

One, Apple’s structure is unique among companies of its size, organized functionally—marketing, software, hardware, sales, operations, etc.—rather than by product lines or business units. Most external CEOs are familiar with managing “general managers,” not functional experts.

Two, and more importantly, Apple is extremely culture-driven, and they take great pains to maintain that culture. Every leader (or potential leader) goes through “Apple University,” which strives to instill, cultivate, and reinforce that culture.

A CEO who hasn’t spent a decade-plus inside Apple, who doesn’t already understand Apple’s business structure, who isn’t steeped in Apple’s culture—who doesn’t embody “What Makes Apple, Apple”—will not succeed at Apple.