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Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner is stepping down after just about 15 years on the helm of probably the most international’s greatest and maximum a hit tech firms.
As he steps into the position of government chairman, he’s being changed by way of senior VP of {hardware} engineering John Ternus, a 25-year veteran on the company.
So how can we view Cook dinner’s legacy at Apple? And what subsequent for probably the most international’s maximum essential video games platforms?
The great: Cook dinner has been an ideal steward for Apple in rising its riches, keeping up its management place in {hardware} whilst construction a multi-billion buck products and services trade, which contains Apple Arcade. It’s recently value $4 trillion and no, it’s no longer profitable giant tech’s AI warfare. And apropos of not anything, however Apple TV has displays Netflix can handiest dream of.
For all of the issues I’ll point out right here, they don’t recently display up on Apple’s base line. It reported a file $143.8 billion in income in its fiscal 2026 first quarter.
The unhealthy: Let’s be fair, as a steward of probably the most international’s maximum essential video games platforms, Apple hasn’t been excellent to publishers. App Monitoring Transparency reduce the legs off an trade constructed on consumer acquisition. Then, within the identify of privateness, it used ATT to construct its personal large commercials unit. However that is modus operandi for large tech in terms of video games as opposed to chasing greener pastures (see Fb’s browser video games trade).
Neither the App Retailer or Google Play actually set a gold usual for discovery, for each customers and publishers, in the way in which that Netflix does for TV and picture or Steam does for PC (some may disagree at the latter’s luck!). And is Apple Video games even doing anything else since its release?
The unsightly: Apple’s giant {hardware} play underneath Tim Cook dinner used to be the Imaginative and prescient Professional – a gamble on the way forward for computing that used to be a complete crisis. It reportedly shipped 45,000 devices in This autumn 2025. There’s a possibility that funding may repay in long term if AR glasses take off. However we may well be a pair Silicon Valley buzzword cycles off from that one. I feel it (exams notes) comes after robotics. Apple has additionally failed to this point with Apple Intelligence after a botched preliminary strive at rolling it out on iPhone.
In the meantime, Apple’s behaviour protecting its income proportion and anti-steering insurance policies has made it a villain of the video games trade. At the one hand, what would we think Apple to do? It used to be infrequently going to easily capitulate to regulators and Epic Video games’ proceedings.
However the makes an attempt to avert exchange at each flip and increase ever-increasingly advanced regulations has harmed its recognition and extra empowered the direct-to-consumer motion. And arguably, Apple may in fact be worse off right here than if it had engaged severely with those demanding situations. Its behaviour noticed the App Retailer cracked open totally in the USA.
What’s subsequent: It’s simple to have a look at Apple appointing any individual with a {hardware} background to invest that the corporate may go back to its days of innovation. Possibly the most important problem is how Apple suits into the present AI pattern – regardless that Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas doesn’t see the iPhone getting disrupted in any respect.
As for Apple’s angle to video games, we will dream, however issues will most definitely stay a lot the similar. Occasional bulletins and demos whilst brushing the trade apart because it chases different ventures.
Achieve insights into cellular video games trade alternatives, demanding situations and tendencies at certainly one of our many international Pocket Gamer Connects meetings. Meet with native mavens throughout our upcoming occasions like PGC Summit Malmö on Might twenty seventh to twenty eighth and PGC Barcelona on June fifteenth to sixteenth. Publication readers can get a ten% cut price on tickets.
