Phil Schiller Steps Down From App Store Leadership as Apple's New CEO Pushes for More Revenue

Phil Schiller is stepping down from his role leading the App Store, handing the division to Apple's Services organization under Eddy Cue and transferring management of Apple's product events to Nola Weinstein. The move, first reported by Bloomberg on August 31, 2026, was elaborated on September 6 by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who wrote that Schiller's departure was driven by personal priorities and a strategic divergence with Apple's new leadership over how aggressively to monetize the App Store.

Schiller, 66, will remain at Apple as an Apple Fellow working on unspecified projects. He stepped down from his position as senior vice president of marketing in 2020 but retained oversight of the App Store and Apple's product events. Those responsibilities are now being distributed: App Store operations move under Cue's Services division, and event management goes to Weinstein (9to5Mac).

The most consequential detail in Gurman's September 6 reporting concerns the strategic reasoning. New Apple CEO John Ternus and services chief Eddy Cue want to improve App Store margins — the profit Apple keeps after costs — and bring in more recurring revenue, the kind that comes in regularly through subscriptions rather than one-time purchases. Schiller believed that pushing harder on App Store profitability would increase conflict with governments and developers. Rather than fight that battle, he stepped aside. Gurman characterized the decision as a quiet withdrawal rather than a confrontation, reporting that there was no major dispute over the Ternus-Cue strategy. Schiller simply did not want to be involved in executing it (TechCrunch).

Gurman also reported that Schiller's desire to spend more time with his family and on philanthropy factored into the decision. The Bloomberg newsletter noted additionally that Apple's new CEO will need to overhaul the company's management team in the near term, placing Schiller's departure within a broader executive transition under Ternus.

The App Store has been a flashpoint for regulatory action and developer litigation across multiple jurisdictions in recent years. Schiller's reluctance to pursue a margin-maximization strategy that he believed would intensify those conflicts is a notable signal about where Apple's new leadership sees the Services business heading. Ternus and Cue are reportedly focused on extracting more recurring revenue from what is already Apple's most profitable segment, a direction that the existing App Store leadership was apparently unwilling to champion.

The broader context here is worth pausing on. A senior executive choosing to step away rather than implement a strategy he considers counterproductive is not the same as being forced out, and Gurman was careful to distinguish the two. But the substance is clear: Apple's new CEO and his services chief intend to push the App Store harder on financial performance, and the person who had been running it did not want to be the one doing the pushing. That tells you something about both the direction of travel and the internal temperature at Apple right now.

For developers, the question is whether margin improvement means changes to the commission structure — the percentage Apple takes from app sales and in-app purchases — new subscription requirements, or expanded advertising within the App Store. All of these would touch the same regulatory pressure points that have made the platform's business model a subject of antitrust scrutiny. For Apple's leadership, the calculation is presumably that the revenue upside outweighs the regulatory and reputational risk.

Gurman's September 6 newsletter also noted that Tim Cook's compensation package signals he intends to remain at Apple, and that the company is preparing for a September 9 product event, contextualizing Schiller's departure within a period of leadership continuity at the top alongside executive reshuffling below.

Schiller's tenure at Apple spans decades of the company's most consequential product cycles. His transition to Apple Fellow mirrors the pattern set in 2020, when he left the SVP of Marketing role but retained the App Store portfolio. This time, he is relinquishing that portfolio entirely, and the App Store is being absorbed into the Services division that already accounts for a growing share of Apple's revenue.

Whether Ternus and Cue's strategy for the App Store delivers the margin improvements they are seeking, and whether it provokes the regulatory and developer friction Schiller anticipated, will become apparent as the transition takes effect under Cue's leadership in the coming months.