Apple (AAPL.US) salary revealed after the change of head coach! Turners' annual salary target is 58 million US dollars, and Cook “retreats to the second tier” and still takes 47 million US dollars

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Apple (AAPL.US) said that the new CEO (CEO) John Turners's compensation plan for fiscal year 2027 is worth about 58 million US dollars, and after Tim Cook becomes the executive chairman, his salary will reach about 47 million US dollars.

Apple disclosed this information in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday. It was also Turners' first day as the new CEO. In the future, the new CEO's annual basic salary will be $3 million, and he will receive a target share award worth $55 million next year.

Cook, 65, will hand over the baton to Turners after 15 years at Apple. During Cook's tenure, Apple expanded new product areas and raised annual revenue to close to $500 billion. Under Cook's leadership, Apple's stock price has accumulated a cumulative increase of more than 2,200%, far outperforming the US stock market.

Turners, 51, will receive a prorated Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) worth approximately $2.5 million in fiscal year 2026. Three-quarters of Turners stock rewards will be determined based on Apple's performance compared to other components of the S&P 500 index; the remaining 25% is linked to time-based stock units and is attributed every six months.

As part of his new role, Cook's annual salary will be cut from $3 million to $2 million, while the target value of his 2027 stock compensation plan is $45 million. The degree to which his salary is linked to Apple's performance will also decrease; only half of it is linked to S&P 500 performance.

In 2025, Cook's total compensation during his time as CEO was $74.3 million. The value of the new stock rewards Turners and Cook received will fluctuate based on Apple's stock price. Cook said earlier that he plans to serve as Apple's executive chairman for a long time.

Apple has never disclosed Turners' salary during his previous tenure as senior vice president of hardware engineering, but including stocks, wages, and bonuses, managers at this level usually receive about 25 million US dollars a year. The documents submitted by Apple on Tuesday did not specify how much more cash bonuses the two executives may receive, but the amount of such bonuses is usually about twice the basic salary.

“Debut” on September 10: The ultimate test of folding screen iPhones and new Siri AI

Speaking to employees for the first time since becoming Apple's new CEO, Turners strongly praised the company's strong product roadmap and predicted that the iPhone to be released next week would be an “extraordinary” product launch. The CEO, who previously headed the hardware engineering department, said he was excited about “everything that is to come” after the launch of the new iPhone, including “incredible products already under development, and products we haven't even imagined and that the future will be conceived and created together by us.” He also thanked Cook for his leadership at Apple and thanked Cook for his help during the handover.

Apple has announced that it will hold an autumn product launch at 1 a.m. on September 10, Beijing time. The theme is “Surprise and Shine” (Surprise and Shine). This will be Turners' first major public appearance as CEO.

The market generally expects that this press conference will break the pace of Apple's iPhone launch that has continued for more than ten years — there is no iPhone 18 standard version, leaving only the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max, and the first folding screen iPhone. The folding screen device is expected to use a horizontal book-style folding design. When unfolded, the inner screen is about 7.8 inches, and the outer screen is about 5.5 inches. All three new models will be equipped with the first 2nm A20 Pro chip. The success or failure of the folding iPhone will directly affect whether Apple can boost average sales prices and gross profit margins through new types of products, especially as global memory and chip costs continue to rise.

The more critical point is that the new version of Siri AI — the voice assistant positioned as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, can reverse the long-term market reputation of Siri being “not easy to use” and will directly determine the market's confidence in Apple's AI strategy.

IDC expects Apple to occupy 40% of the folding device market by the end of 2027. At the same time, a new generation of AI-powered Siri will also be officially unveiled in iOS 27.

Turners' “Three Mountains”: Backward AI, Brain Drain, and Supply Chain Changes

Although Apple, which Turners took over, had a market capitalization of 4.6 trillion US dollars, it faced structural challenges not encountered during the Cook era.

First, AI is seriously lagging behind. In the field of generative AI, Apple's layout is clearly lagging behind. After ChatGPT sparked the AI boom at the end of 2022, although Apple began large-scale investment, the first version of the Apple Intelligence software did not perform well. Last year, Apple made a more controversial decision — abandoning the self-developed model route and paying for Google Gemini technology as the underlying foundation for the new version of Siri, triggering strong dissatisfaction among the internal big language model team, and many core members left their jobs one after another. The new version of Siri AI will be fully launched in September, and it is still unknown whether it can reverse market word of mouth.

Compared to Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI actively integrating AI into consumer and enterprise products, Apple's pace is clearly more cautious and is facing increasing pressure to catch up. Turners must lead Apple to make key choices in the field of AI — increasing investment in R&D, increasing capital expenditure, and even large-scale mergers and acquisitions.

Second, the brain drain has intensified. Hundreds of former Apple employees currently work in the OpenAI hardware department. Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets. About half of Apple's executive team is likely to leave within the next few years. To retain key talent, Turners has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional bonuses to several members of the iPhone design team and personally intervened to retain them.

Third, supply chain changes. Apple's long-term procurement commitments are close to 57 billion US dollars, while the four largest global cloud service providers have procurement commitments of about 2 trillion US dollars. Apple's book debt of $56.2 billion will expire in a year. Meanwhile, Chinese DRAM manufacturer Changxin Storage already accounts for about 11% of global DRAM production, making it a new option available in Apple's supply chain. Bank of America analysts expect that Apple's abandonment of the net cash neutral target “may indicate that Apple will increase R&D investment, capital expenditure, and carry out larger mergers and acquisitions for some time to come.”