San Francisco: Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down from the job that he inherited from the late Steve Jobs, ending a nearly 15-year reign that saw the company's market value soar by more than USD 3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity.

Cook, 65, will turn the CEO duties to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Tenus, on September 1 while remaining involved with the Cupertino, California, company as executive chairman. That’s similar to the transitions made by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Netflix’s Reed Hastings after they ended their highly successful tenures as CEO.

Cook leveraged iPhone’s popularity

Although he never shook the perception that he lacked Jobs’ vision, Cook leveraged the popularity of the iPhone and other breakthroughs orchestrated by his predecessor to lift Apple to heights that seemed unfathomable when it was on the brink of bankruptcy during the mid-1990s.