Jeff Williams, COO of Apple
Apple’s successes in recent years are usually attributed to two people: Tim Cook as CEO and Jony Ive as designer. Nevertheless, Apple has also built up an impressive logistics chain to ensure that products are in your store at the right time. The man responsible for this is Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams. In this explanation we tell you more about this person: who is Jeff Williams, how did he get to his current position and what has he done at Apple in the past?
- Who is Jeff Williams?
- Features within Apple
- Production of Apple Watch
- Leadership of design team
- Possible CEO after Tim Cook
Who is Jeff Williams?
Born in 1963, Jeff Williams has served as Apple’s Chief Operating Officer since 2015. In this role, he manages all operational processes. Williams has been with the company since 1998, where he started as head of global procurement. At the time of Steve Jobs, Williams joined the executive team in 2010 and was promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations. Before joining Apple, Williams worked at IBM.
Williams grew up in the southern United States and holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. He also obtained his master’s degree in Business Administration from the same university where Tim Cook studied: Duke University.
Jeff Williams: Features within Apple
Before joining the executive team, Williams was already responsible for some notable milestones within Apple. For example, he and Steve Jobs ensured that the very first iPhone in 2007 did not have a plastic screen at the last minute. Apple’s original plan was to ship the first iPhone with a plastic screen, and later iPhones with glass. However, plastic turned out to cause too many scratches, so Williams had to quickly find a suitable type of glass. Gorilla Glass was specially developed for this purpose.
As Chief Operating Officer, Williams attends weekly meetings of various teams, including design. He also negotiates with suppliers to steer the production of hundreds of millions of devices in the right direction every year.
From Apple Watch to all hardware
Williams has been responsible for the development of the Apple Watch since 2013 after a pitch about how the smartwatch could serve as a health accessory. He took charge of development and advocated health functions and 4G on the Apple Watch, among other things. Williams is now responsible for the development of all hardware at Apple. He attends weekly meetings to discuss progress. These meetings are called ‘New Product Review’, but in the corridors people talk about the ‘Jeff Review’.
Production of the Apple Watch
Williams played a vital role in the development and production of the Apple Watch. This way he prevented a blunder with the original Apple Watch. The first copies turned out to contain a defective Taptic Engine, as a result of which Apple’s vibration motor would quickly fail.
Williams made sure to fix this problem silently. He arranged for the affected units to end up with employees, and not with customers.
Some employees also suffered from skin complaints with the very first Apple Watch. Williams set up a new production line, using a different nickel for the housing, which solved the problem. As a result, Williams ensured that end users did not notice any initial production errors.
These last-minute issues have (partly) ensured that stocks of the Apple Watch were initially very limited.
Leadership of the design team
Jeff Williams has held the role of Chief Operating Officer since 2015, with an additional role added in 2019. Due to the departure of Jony Ive, Williams takes over the leadership of the design team. This does not mean that he will become actively involved in product design; he will only be in charge of the design departments and will report to Tim Cook. Unlike Tim Cook, Williams would be interested not only in processes but also in the products themselves.
Due to the expansion of Williams’ duties, Apple has appointed an additional chief of operations, Sabih Khan. He is the new Senior Vice President of Operations and will take over from Williams in a number of areas related to product quality, planning, procurement of goods, manufacturing, logistics and more.
Jeff Williams as new CEO?
While Williams may not seem like the most obvious person to be, as a potential successor to Tim Cook, it seems he is being groomed for this. There are currently no rumors of Cook leaving, but a Bloomberg portrait shows Williams as Apple’s second-in-command and intended future CEO. This is evident from interviews with former colleagues. Williams would be similar in personality to Tim Cook: modest, yet disciplined. He expects a lot from his team and he sets high standards.
As soon as there are changes around Jeff Williams and his positions inside or outside of Apple, we’ll update this explanation!
Read more about other top people at Apple:
- Tim Cook: all about Apple’s CEO
- Jony Ive: all about the Apple designer
- Craig Federighi, all about Apple’s head of software development
