Ex-Apple exec Tony Fadell purportedly said he’d be happy to replace Tim Cook as Apple’s CEO. However, the Sellers Research Group (that’s me) says there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that this will happen.
But let’s back up: there’s a lot of online talk (mostly unfounded rumors) that Cook will step down as CEO sometime next year. The top two potential replacements are (again, per the rumor mill) hardware chief John Ternus and Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineer.
However, according to a report at The Information — as spotted by 9to5Mac — claim Fadell, a former Apple hardware executive who co-invented the iPod, has told associates recently that he would be open to replacing Cook as CEO.
The article says the idea of Fadell as a Cook successor has some support among former Apple executives, who believe it could do with some shaking up from a brash product leader who has an entrepreneurial track record. Fadell co-founded the smart-home startup Nest, which he sold to Google for $3.2 billion in 2014.
However, as The Information notes, other folks close to Apple consider Fadell an unlikely candidate, in part because he was a polarizing figure when he worked at the company. Fadell left Apple in 2010. Which is why I don’t think he’ll ever be Apple’s CEO.
That said, he has an interesting resume. Fadell joined Apple Inc. in 2001 and oversaw all iPod hardware, software, and accessories development. He is known as the “father of the iPod”. As the co-creator of the iPhone, he also worked on the first three generations of the iPhone and oversaw all iPhone hardware, firmware, and accessories development from March 2006 to November 2008.
In May 2010, he co-founded Nest Labs, which announced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in October 2011. Nest was acquired by Google in January 2014 for $3.2 billion.
Fadell has authored more than 300 patents and was named one of Time‘s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2014. In 2016 Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time”.
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