Apple names Jeff Williams new chief operating officer, places Phil Schiller in charge of App Store

Apple announced an executive shakeup on Thursday, promoting Jeff Williams to the position of chief operating officer, and placing marketing chief Phil Schiller in charge of the App Store on all platforms.

As part of the revised team, Johny Srouji has joined Apple's executive lineup as senior vice president for the company's Hardware Technologies division.

Apple also announced that Tor Myhren will join Apple in the first calendar quarter of 2016 as vice president of Marketing Communications, reporting directly to Chief Executive Tim Cook.

"We are fortunate to have incredible depth and breadth of talent across Apple's executive team," Cook said. "As we come to the end of the year, we're recognizing the contributions already being made by two key executives. Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I've ever worked with, and Johny's team delivers world-class silicon designs which enable new innovations in our products year after year."

Williams joined Apple in 1998 as head of worldwide procurement and in 2004 he was named vice president of Operations. Since 2010 he has overseen Apple's entire supply chain, service and support, and the social responsibility initiatives which protect more than one million workers worldwide.

Williams also played a key role in Apple's entry into the mobile phone market with the launch of iPhone, and he continues to supervise development of Apple's first wearable product, the Apple Watch.

"Phil is taking on new responsibilities for advancing our ecosystem, led by the App Store, which has grown from a single, groundbreaking iOS store into four powerful platforms and an increasingly important part of our business," Cook said.

With added responsibility for the App Store, Schiller will focus on strategies to extend the ecosystem for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, Apple said. Schiller now leads nearly all developer-related functions at Apple, in addition to his other marketing responsibilities including Worldwide Product Marketing, international marketing, education and business marketing.

More than 11 million developers around the world create apps for Apple's four software platforms — iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS — as well as compatible hardware and other accessories, and customers have downloaded more than 100 billion apps across those platforms.

Johny Srouji, left, is Apple's new senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. Tim Cook, right, made the announcement on Thursday.

As for Srouji, he's spent nearly eight years at Apple as vice president of Hardware Technologies, during which Apple said built one of the world's strongest and most innovative teams of silicon and technology engineers. There he oversaw breakthrough custom silicon and hardware technologies including batteries, application processors, storage controllers, sensors silicon, display silicon and other chipsets across Apple's entire product line.

Educated at Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, Srouji joined Apple in 2008 to lead development of the A4, the first Apple-designed system on a chip.

Tor Myhren will join Apple in early 2016 as VP of Marketing Communications. Photo via The Globe and Mail.

"I'm incredibly happy to welcome Tor Myhren, who will bring his creative talents to our advertising and marcom functions," Cook said.

Myhren joins Apple from Grey Group, where he has served as chief creative officer and president of Grey New York. Under his leadership, Grey was named Adweek's Global Agency of the Year for both 2013 and 2015.

As vice president of Marketing Communications at Apple, Myhren will be responsible for Apple's advertising efforts and will lead an award-winning team that spans a broad range of creative disciplines from video, motion graphics and interactive web design to packaging and retail store displays.

Myhren will succeed Hiroki Asai, who earlier announced plans to retire after 18 years in graphic design and marketing communications roles at Apple.