Apple’s Head of iCloud heading out the door in latest executive exit

Apple is set to lose another top executive this spring, this time the company’s chief of cloud services. The change comes after Apple lost one of its top services executives, Peter Stern, at the end of January this year.

Update 12:27 pm PT: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has shared that veteran Apple VP Jeff Robbin – known as the creator of iTunes – will be stepping into the cloud chief role.

Reported by Bloomberg, Apple’s Michael Abbott who oversees all of the company’s cloud-related products including iCloud and the backend of important apps like iMessage, FaceTime, and more is planning to leave at the end of April.

The move will leave a notable hole in one of Apple’s most important divisions. This shift comes after a reorganization within the services team due to Peter Stern leaving in January. That saw Apple split Stern’s responsibilities between three different divisions.

Being in charge of iCloud, Abbott’s responsibilities included iCloud.com, iCloud Mail, iCloud data encryption, Find My, Emergency SOS on iPhone, CloudKit, and the infrastructure behind iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime. Beyond iCloud, the executive was also in charge of privacy and security engineering for Apple’s services.

Abbott’s departure in April comes after five years in the role which lines up with when his AAPL shares vest.

Even though Apple will have its work cut out to fill Abbott’s important role, the services division led by Eddy Cue posted its best revenue ever for its Q1 2023 results with $20.8 billion in the holiday period.

Meanwhile, executive departures recently include Jony Ive’s successor Evans Hankey leaving last October – we then found out in February Apple has decided to eliminate its “industrial design chief” role.

And just before that, Apple fired its VP of procurement after he made some crude remarks in a TikTok video that went viral.