Phil Schiller Steps Down From App Store as Apple Pushes to Raise Margins, Bloomberg Reports

Phil Schiller, one of Apple's longest-serving executives, stepped down from running the App Store and Apple's product launch events in the final days of August, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The move landed the same week Tim Cook worked his last day as CEO on August 31 and John Ternus officially took over on September 1.

Schiller isn't leaving Apple. He stays on as an Apple Fellow, a title reserved for executives who've made major technical or leadership contributions, and will keep working on what Apple describes only as unspecified projects. Gurman reports colleagues view the move as a clear step toward eventual retirement for the 66-year-old, who has been at Apple since 1987 with one four-year gap.

Two Jobs, Two New Owners

Day-to-day control of the App Store now belongs to Carson Oliver, a 14-year Apple veteran who has worked in the App Store division the entire time, according to Bloomberg and confirmed by 9to5Mac and Yahoo Finance. Oliver reports directly to Eddy Cue, and the App Store itself is moving out of the marketing organization and into Cue's services division, the same setup that existed before Schiller took the job in 2015. Apple Arcade goes with it.

Apple's product events, the keynotes where Schiller was a fixture on stage for decades, now fall to Nola Weinstein, who has served as his deputy on events since 2023. She reports to communications chief Kristin Huguet Quayle rather than through the App Store chain.

The Money Angle

Gurman's reporting, relayed through both TechCrunch and 9to5Mac, points to more than a desire for family time and philanthropy. Ternus and Cue reportedly want to raise App Store margins and generate more recurring revenue from a platform that iClarified estimates already brings in roughly $30 billion a year.

Schiller, in Gurman's telling, believed that push would only inflame tensions with developers and regulators who've spent years fighting Apple over App Store fees and control. There was no internal blowup, according to Gurman's account. Schiller simply decided he didn't want to be the one implementing a strategy he thought would create more legal and political headaches and stepped back instead.

The pressure Apple is under is real. The company's cut of App Store payments has been the subject of years of developer complaints and multiple lawsuits, most notably Epic Games' 2020 antitrust case. A judge dismissed the monopoly claims and largely ruled for Apple, according to Yahoo Finance, but ordered the company to let developers link out to external payment options. That fight, Yahoo Finance notes, is still ongoing.

9to5Mac raises one concrete way Apple could try to cut costs and raise margins: scaling back its manual app review process, which is expensive to run and, in the age of AI-assisted app development, arguably less effective than it used to be. Whether Apple actually does that, or something else entirely, hasn't been confirmed. Gurman's sourcing describes an intention to find margin, not a finished plan.

Part of a Bigger Reshuffle

Schiller's exit from the App Store job isn't an isolated event. Yahoo Finance ties it to a broader wave of senior departures at Apple. Former chief operating officer Jeff Williams retired in December after 27 years, general counsel Kate Adams and environmental policy chief Lisa Jackson both had retirements announced in December, Apple Pay veteran Jennifer Bailey is set to retire in October after more than 20 years, and vice president Paul Meade departed in June.

With Ternus now in the CEO chair and Cook moved into the Executive Chairman role, iClarified reports that finance chief Kevan Parekh and operations chief Sabih Khan are also expected to take on bigger responsibilities as Apple's leadership bench turns over.

The App Store change is a legitimate business call. A company protecting margins on a $30 billion-a-year platform isn't a scandal, and no wrongdoing is alleged here by any source. Whether Ternus and Cue actually move forward with the margin push Gurman describes, what form it takes if they do, and whether it draws fresh scrutiny from the regulators and courts already circling Apple's App Store practices remain unresolved.