Apple names first COO in four years

Apple named its first chief operating officer in four years on Thursday, as part of an end-of-year executive shuffle.

The California-based electronics and computing giant announced that long-serving employee Jeff Williams would be promoted to the role of COO.

Williams joined Apple in 1998, initially as head of worldwide procurement. In 2004 he was promoted to vice president of operations, and since 2010 he has overseen Apple's entire supply chain.

He has been considered a key player in the launch of Apple's wildly successful iPhone, and its relatively unpopular Apple Watch product.

"Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I've ever worked with," said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
The role of COO had been left vacant since Tim Cook left the post to succeed the late Steve Jobs as CEO in 2011.

In other announcements at the firm, Johny Srouji was promoted to the executive team as senior vice president for hardware technologies. He had been vice president of hardware technologies for eight years.

"Johny's team delivers world-class silicon designs which enable new innovations in our products year after year", said Cook.

Phil Schiller - currently senior vice president of worldwide marketing - would expand his role to lead the App Store, and Tor Myhren was announced as new vice president of marketing communications, set to join the company in the first quarter of 2016.