Apple’s Cook Promotes Eddy Cue to Senior VP

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, making his first top appointment since succeeding Steve Jobs, promoted iTunes head Eddy Cue to senior vice president of Internet software and services.

Cue oversees the iTunes online music store, as well as the App Store, which sells downloadable software for iPads and iPhones, Cook said in a memo. Cue, a 22-year Apple veteran, is also in charge of the planned iCloud service, which will let users access content across multiple Apple devices.

Cue’s responsibilities include iAd, the mobile-ad business that cut rates by as much as 70 percent this year to keep users from defecting to Google Inc.’s competing AdMob. The promotion reflects his role in building iTunes and the App Store, and it puts him on the same level as executives including design head Jonathan Ive and software chief Scott Forstall.

“Apple is a company and culture unlike any other in the world and leaders like Eddy get that,” Cook wrote. “Apple is in their blood.”

Cue was a manager in Apple’s customer support unit when in 1997 Jobs returned to the company after an ouster more than a decade earlier. Jobs put Cue in charge of one of his first efforts: to build an online store. The success of the store helped Apple sell directly to customers rather than through a less efficient network of dealers and retailers, which Jobs trimmed before launching his own line of stores.

Jobs Resigns

Cue later helped develop the initial iTunes store as well as the processes that would make purchasing songs or downloading apps simple and secure.

Jobs resigned last week after taking medical leave in January. He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2003 and had a liver transplant in 2009.

Apple’s iCloud will automatically store and sync photos, documents, calendar items and other content on all of a consumer’s Apple devices.

If successful, “iCloud could be one of the biggest things in Apple’s history,” Walter C. Price, managing director of RCM Capital Management, said in a recent interview. If the service works as advertised, it could add $100 billion to Apple’s current market value, now at $353.6 billion.

Cue’s promotion was previously reported by the 9to5Mac blog.

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Burrows in San Francisco at pburrows@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net.

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Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue

Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook promoted Eddy Cue to senior vice president of Internet software and services, marking his first top appointment since succeeding Steve Jobs as CEO.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook promoted Eddy Cue to senior vice president of Internet software and services, marking his first top appointment since succeeding Steve Jobs as CEO. Photographer: Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg