Apple under Ternus: what comes next for the tech giant’s hardware strategy

As Apple races to enactment competitory successful AI portion navigating tariffs and proviso concatenation uncertainty, the company’s aboriginal is astir to displacement nether caller leadership.

On Monday, Apple announced that John Ternus volition instrumentality implicit arsenic CEO aboriginal this year, succeeding Tim Cook.

Cook transformed Apple into a $4 trillion planetary powerhouse, expanded its services business, and oversaw immoderate of the astir profitable years successful tech history. Ternus brings a antithetic benignant of skillset. A longtime hardware executive, helium has spent his vocation gathering Apple’s devices alternatively than managing the broader business.

Ternus joined Apple successful 2001 and roseate done the ranks of hardware engineering. Along the way, helium has contributed to immoderate of the company’s biggest products, including AirPods, the Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.

His assignment signals a renewed absorption connected hardware astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile Apple is nether unit to specify its adjacent era. Ternus volition present assistance find what that looks like.

Hardware with AI astatine the center

Rather than trying to vie head-on with companies gathering the biggest AI models, Ternus whitethorn propulsion Apple to absorption connected the AI-powered devices themselves, whether that beryllium the 1 successful your hand, thing you wear, oregon thing that lives successful your home.

There’s already a batch of speculation astir what Apple could motorboat next. Ideas floating astir see astute glasses, a wearable pendant with a built-in camera, and adjacent AirPods with AI features. According to Bloomberg, the thought is that each of these products would link to the iPhone, with Siri playing a large role.

Image Credits:Apple

Ternus is besides expected to propulsion guardant connected products that person been stuck successful limbo. Foldable iPhones are the evident example. They’ve been rumored for years, and portion competitors person already moved ahead, Apple has taken a slower approach, waiting until the exertion meets its standards. Reports accidental it volition get successful September, which means Ternus volition beryllium overseeing the launch.

Apple has besides reportedly been exploring robotics, peculiarly for the home. One conception includes a tabletop device with a robotic limb attached to a display, fundamentally a astute adjunct that tin determination and crook toward you. Notably, this lines up with Ternus’s long-standing involvement successful robotics. In college, helium built a instrumentality that allowed quadriplegics to power a mechanical feeding limb utilizing caput movements, arsenic reported by the New York Times.

There are besides ideas for mobile robots that could travel you around, grip elemental tasks, oregon enactment similar a moving FaceTime screen. Some reports adjacent notation experiments with humanoid robots, though those are apt years away.

While nary of these are guaranteed to happen, they bash springiness a beauteous wide consciousness of wherever Apple’s reasoning mightiness beryllium going.

However, ongoing representation spot shortages, President Trump’s often shifting tariff policies, and the company’s reliance connected Chinese manufacturing could make a challenging play ahead. Roughly 80% of iPhones were produced successful China earlier the tariffs. The institution precocious pivoted to India, making astir 25% of its iPhones successful the state past year, according to Bloomberg.