Phil Schiller stepped down from the App Store and Apple's events as John Ternus took over

Phil Schiller no longer runs Apple’s App Store. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported the change on August 31, Tim Cook’s last day as CEO. The store moves to Eddy Cue’s services group, and Schiller keeps the Apple Fellow title he’s held since 2020.

The reshuffle takes out the executive who has argued Apple’s side of nearly every App Store fight since 2015. Schiller ran the store through Epic Games’ antitrust suit, testified at the contempt hearing that followed it, and owned Apple’s compliance work under the EU’s DMA. None of those fights are finished. Apple’s rewritten European terms take effect on October 1, and the Justice Department’s monopolization case is still stuck in discovery in New Jersey. John Ternus, who became CEO on September 1, inherits all of it without the person who spent a decade in the room for it.

What we know

Gurman posted on Bluesky that Schiller, “one of its most important and visible executives during both the Jobs and Cook eras, is stepping down from his role leading the App Store and product launch events in Apple’s major changing of the guard.” Bloomberg reported the move happened “in recent days.” Apple hasn’t announced any of it publicly, and Engadget noted there was no press release to go with the reorganization.

• The App Store leaves marketing. It now sits inside services under Eddy Cue, who oversaw it until 2015. Carson Oliver, a 14-year veteran of the division, handles day-to-day operations and reports to Cue.
• Events go to Nola Weinstein. Schiller’s deputy on product launches takes the events team, reporting to communications VP Kristin Huguet Quayle. Her first one is the September 9 “Surprise and shine” event for the iPhone 18 Pro and Apple’s first foldable.
• Schiller stays, narrowly. He keeps the Apple Fellow title and moves to projects Apple hasn’t described. Colleagues read the change as a big step toward retirement.

What the App Store loses

Institutional memory, mostly. Schiller joined Apple in 1987 and has been there ever since apart from a four-year gap. He took the App Store in 2015, which means he owned it through Epic’s 2020 suit, the anti-steering injunction that came out of it, the 2025 contempt ruling that forced Apple to allow commission-free link-outs in the US, and rule rewrites demanded by regulators in Brazil and Japan. He was reportedly working close to 80 hours a week by 2024.

He also lost arguments inside the building, which is the part that matters for what happens next. At the February 2025 contempt hearing Schiller testified that he’d opposed charging developers a commission on purchases made outside the App Store. “I had great concerns about the collections of funds from developers,” he said, warning that the fee would change Apple’s relationship with developers “in a way I thought would be detrimental.” A committee that included Tim Cook voted for the commission anyway.

That job is Cue’s now, and the calendar is unforgiving. Apple has already rewritten its EU terms to settle its Digital Markets Act dispute: a 26% standard commission on App Store in-app purchases, 15% for small developers and for subscriptions past year one, and a 5% Core Technology Commission on apps distributed outside the store. Those take effect October 1. Brussels fined Apple 500 million euros in April 2025 over anti-steering rules and has used the same law against Google.

What nobody has said

Whether Schiller still handles regulators. His Apple Fellow work is unspecified, which could mean advising on the DOJ case or nothing at all. Nobody has said whether he’ll be deposed again, or whether the line he used in 2020 about staying at Apple “as long as they will have me” now has a date attached.

The larger unknown is what Cue’s ownership does to App Store policy. Marketing ran the store for 11 years. Services runs a business Apple reports as its own revenue line, and Cue’s organization carries growth targets that a marketing group never had to hit. Apple hasn’t said whether a reporting change comes with a change in posture toward developers, and Schiller’s exit is one of several: Jeff Williams retired as COO in 2025, general counsel Kate Adams left in March, and Apple Pay chief Jennifer Bailey retires in October.

What this means for you

If you ship an iOS app in Europe, the October 1 terms matter more than the org chart, and you want to model the new commission tiers against your actual mix of in-app purchases and web checkouts before they land. Read them now. After that, watch who Apple sends to the next regulatory hearing. Schiller was the face of App Store policy for a decade, and he was the one executive who could tell a court he had raised concerns and point at the paper trail proving it. Cue is a dealmaker who owns a services P&L. My read: the first real test comes at the DMA compliance review under Ternus, and a services boss with revenue targets negotiates from a narrower position than a marketing chief with a decade of scar tissue.