Apple CEO John Ternus wants to make one thing clear: the iPhone is not going anywhere.
During his first keynote as CEO on Wednesday, Ternus placed the company’s iconic smartphone firmly at the center of Apple’s product strategy for the artificial intelligence era.
“There’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” he said.
That message marks a shift from the approach taken by former CEO Tim Cook, who repeatedly sought to reassure Wall Street that Apple was much more than an iPhone company.
Ternus’s strategy also challenges recent commentary questioning the smartphone’s future. One headline declared that “the smartphone’s days are numbered,” while another argued that the end of the Tim Cook era had left Apple facing an existential question: what comes after the iPhone?
But Ternus’s vision is not focused solely on the device itself. He has positioned the iPhone as the foundation of Apple’s broader “intelligent personal assistant” strategy—a direction that could shape the company for years to come.
In doing so, Ternus appears to be following a strategy Steve Jobs used in 2001 with the Mac, less than 10 months before unveiling the iPod.
At the time, many observers believed the personal computer’s relevance was fading. During a Macworld New York keynote, Jobs highlighted pessimistic comments from industry figures, including journalist Walt Mossberg and executives at Compaq and Gateway.
