New Products All Year Round and Layoffs: What Reforms Is Apple's New CEO John Turnus Planning?

Apple CEO John Turnus, who has held the position for only a few weeks, discussed future internal reforms with his team, according to Bloomberg sources. He aims to accelerate product development, expand the device lineup, and create a leaner organization with a greater emphasis on engineering teams. These plans offer the first glimpse of how Apple will change. At the same time, budget cuts are already noticeable, according to company employees.

According to sources who spoke with Bloomberg, among the first ideas Turnus is considering are moving away from the traditional spring and fall product launch schedule, as well as cutting some middle management positions to reduce the number of management layers between engineers and senior leadership. According to the agency’s sources, Turnus has made it clear that Apple needs to bring products to market faster and experiment more actively—he believes this is the only way the company can remain competitive in the age of artificial intelligence.

In 2027, Apple will release AirPods with cameras, the company’s first smart glasses, and a redesigned iPhone to mark the device’s 20th anniversary, according to Bloomberg. And Ternus wants the company to unveil new products throughout the year. However, changing Apple’s long-established development processes will be a difficult task and, according to employees, could take years, the agency warns.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg sources say that Apple is already taking steps to cut costs. When Turnus headed the tech giant’s hardware engineering division, he told employees that the company should hire fewer people, demand more from existing engineers, and reduce organizational bloat, Bloomberg notes. At one of the all-hands meetings, Turnus showed a slide illustrating the trend in workforce growth and stated that Apple should achieve more with fewer employees. The agency notes that this approach resembles the more dynamic corporate cultures at Meta Platforms and Google.

Over the past two weeks, the hardware engineering division has begun laying off some of the engineering program managers (EPMs) responsible for timelines and coordination among teams. The layoffs have affected several managers, including about six directors—one of the highest-ranking positions in the company, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg. They were given several weeks to find other positions within Apple. Those who are unable to do so will be laid off later this year. Such measures were rare in the past, but they have become increasingly common in recent months, the agency reports.

Apple has also made minor layoffs in other teams and has begun to scale back or cancel projects earlier that are less critical to its financial performance. The cuts affected the Siri, Vision Pro, and AI software development teams. Recently, the company also downsized part of the Fitness+ team that was working on audio versions of workouts.

According to sources who spoke with Bloomberg, Ternus is also exploring the possibility of using AI to speed up development and handle some of the staff’s workload. This summer, Apple considered laying off about 5,000 AppleCare employees, including those who work remotely, with the intention of transferring some of their responsibilities to AI-powered phone and web agents. The company later shelved that plan and currently has no intention of implementing it, the agency reports.

Nevertheless, employees anticipate further layoffs at the end of this year or early next year. When planning for 2027, some divisions initially expected their budgets and headcounts to increase, but later scaled back spending increases, kept staffing levels in some teams unchanged year-over-year, and instructed other departments to cut marketing expenses, according to Bloomberg.

Department heads are already feeling the pressure to work faster, according to Bloomberg. “Now we have to dive much deeper into everything than before,” said a source who spoke to the agency. “It’s all very chaotic right now.” According to Bloomberg sources, product team leaders are being required to release more products, more frequently, and within shorter timeframes.

Ternus, Head of Services Eddy Cue, and Chief Financial Officer Kewan Parekh are also looking for new ways to sustain revenue growth amid a slowdown in Apple’s services business and pressure on the App Store’s economy, according to Bloomberg. They discussed launching new services and ways to generate more revenue from existing products and offerings.

Services have long been one of Apple’s fastest-growing and most profitable segments, helping to offset fluctuations in device sales, Bloomberg notes. However, the growth rate has slowed. In the most recent quarter, revenue from services declined quarter-over-quarter for the first time since 2022, although it remained above last year’s level and set a record for that period.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor