Apple has a new Chief Operating Officer.
Sabih Khan, the man who has quietly kept Apple’s global supply chain humming for nearly three decades, is stepping into the role, replacing Jeff Williams in what the company calls a “long-planned succession.”
It’s hard to overstate Khan’s operational resume. He joined Apple in 1995, worked his way up through procurement and manufacturing, and as SVP of Operations oversaw everything from supplier partnerships to logistics and sustainability. Under his watch, Apple cut its supply chain carbon footprint by more than 60%. Tim Cook calls him “a brilliant strategist.” Sustainability magazines call him “visionary.” Supply chain insiders call him “the guy who makes the impossible look on time.”
If Apple’s biggest competitive advantage has always been operational mastery, Khan is the safe bet. The continuity candidate. The one who ensures Apple’s hardware gets made, gets shipped, and gets into hands on schedule, no matter what’s happening in the world.
In an era where AI, automation, and product intelligence are reshaping entire industries, is operational excellence alone enough for the number two at the world’s most valuable tech company?
This isn’t a knock on Khan. In fact, he’s been using AI for years in supply chain forecasting, predictive maintenance, and quality control. But that’s AI as a tool, not AI as a competitive product edge. And in the product realm, Apple’s AI story is… well, Siri.
Siri isn’t Khan’s responsibility, but it has become a shorthand for Apple’s slower pace in consumer-facing AI. It’s a reminder that while the company perfects the craft of hardware delivery, the intelligence inside sometimes feels a step behind.
While rivals pour billions into generative AI and autonomous agents, Apple’s approach has been cautious, privacy-first, and often slow to market. Siri, once a novelty, now a punchline, hasn’t closed the gap. And while Apple has John Giannandrea running AI strategy, the question is whether the COO’s scope should explicitly connect the dots between manufacturing mastery and AI-driven product evolution.
The danger isn’t that Khan will fail at operations. It’s that Apple keeps delivering beautifully made devices whose “brains” don’t match their build quality.
We’ve seen this movie before:
Nokia: unmatched distribution, missed the smartphone UX shift.
BlackBerry: rock-solid reliability, ignored touchscreens and app ecosystems.
Kodak: manufacturing marvel, slow to pivot to digital.
All had world-class operations. None survived the innovation shift they underestimated.
Apple has picked the perfect number two for today’s Apple. The question is whether he’s the perfect number two for tomorrow’s.
