Eddy Cue (born Eduardo H. Cue; October 23, 1964) is

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

senior vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...

of Services, reporting to

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Tim Cook Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs. ...

. Cue oversees Apple's numerous content stores including the

iTunes Store The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...

, the

Apple Books Store Apple Books (formerly known as iBooks between January 2010 and September 2018) is an e-book reading and store application by Apple Inc. for its iOS and macOS operating systems and devices. It was announced, under the name iBooks, in conjunctio ...

, and

Apple Music Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple M ...

, as well as

Apple Pay Apple Pay is a mobile payment service by Apple Inc. that allows users to make payments in person, in iOS apps, and on the web. It is supported on these Apple devices: iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac. It digitizes and can replace a credit ...

Siri Siri ( ) is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, and audioOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questio ...

(until 2017),

Maps A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

iAd iAd is a discontinued mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications. iAd is part of App ...

iCloud iCloud is a Personal cloud, cloud service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011 as a successor to MobileMe. , the service had an estimated 850 million users, up from 782 million users in 2016. iCloud enables users to sync their data to t ...

services, and Apple's productivity and creativity apps. Cue testified in the antitrust case against Apple for conspiring on eBook pricing.

Business career

Early career (1990s)

Eddy Cue joined Apple in 1989 and was instrumental in creating the

Apple online store The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital medi ...

in 1998, the iTunes Store in 2003, and the App Store in 2008. In his early years at Apple, he was a manager of

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

and

customer support Customer support is a range of services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. Reg ...

teams. In 1999, he convinced Apple to work with

Akamai Technologies Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...

Inc. on new streaming functions for its QuickTime video software. He also played a key role in developing Apple's iLife suite of applications, namely Apple Books, the iAd advertising service, and Apple's App Store of more than 700,000 applications. Cue is widely known at Apple for turning around its failed products, such as the MobileMe data syncing service as well as iCloud in 2011, which now has more than a quarter billion users. Likewise, Cue is famous for advising

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

to consider creating a smaller version of the iPad based on his own experience with the product. While Jobs was originally against the idea, Tim Cook eventually agreed with the concept upon becoming CEO after Jobs' death.

Today (2011–present)

As senior vice president of Services (previously the senior vice president of Internet Software and Services), Cue has addressed Apple's mobile maps, iCloud, and

iMessage iMessage is an instant messaging service developed by Apple Inc. and launched in 2011. iMessage functions exclusively on Apple platforms: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS. Core features of iMessage, available on all supported platforms, includ ...

outages. Additionally, Cue took command of Apple's voice-activated assistant

. However, this service was delegated to

Craig Federighi Craig Federighi (born May 27, 1969) is an American engineer and business executive who is the senior vice president (SVP) of software engineering at Apple Inc. He oversees the development of iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Apple's common operating syste ...

, Apple's senior software engineering vice president, and

John Giannandrea John Giannandrea is a Scottish software engineer and businessman. He co-founded Metaweb, led Google Search and artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information� ...

, Apple's senior vice president of AI/ML. Cue's responsibilities as the leader of iTunes have included attending to the rise of streaming services, supported by Apple's competition with Spotify and the recent acquisition of Shazam. In response to the rise of video streaming services such as

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

, and

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

, Cue has led Apple's new effort to create its own original content. In 2017, it was announced that Apple had set aside nearly $1 billion to produce original video content to compete with HBO, Amazon, and Netflix. With a base salary of $1,000,000, $1,790,000 in bonuses and incentives, and $20,000,083 in stock, Cue earned over $22.8 million in total compensation for his leadership and performance during the 2016 fiscal year. In April 2021, it was revealed that Cue had initially pushed to bring iMessage to Android in 2013 but was overruled by other executives.

Personal life

The son of a Cuban mother and a Spanish father, Cue resides with his wife Paula (whom he met at Duke University) in

Los Altos, California Los Altos (; Spanish for "The Heights") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 31,625 according to the 2020 census. Most of the city's growth occurred between 1950 and 1980. Originally a ...

, and tries hard to maintain a low profile. Cue is a fan of rock music, with Bruce Springsteen as one of his favorite artists. Cue was recognized by the cancer research center City of Hope with its 2014 Spirit of Life Award, honoring an individual whose work has fundamentally impacted the music, film, and entertainment industry.

Duke University

Cue earned

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

s in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. Cue is an avid Duke basketball fan, and both of his sons Adam and Spencer studied computer science at Duke University as well. Cue's recent involvement with Duke has included encouraging undergraduate women to study computer science and electrical engineering as part of the Duke Technology (DTech) Scholar program launched in 2016. Additionally, Cue joined Duke Men's Basketball Coach Mike Krzysweski in founding PowerForward, a mobile video network which targets the B2B market offering subscriptions to video content and case studies aimed to help corporations foster leadership and build teams. He is also the first Cuban-American on Duke's Board of Trustees and donated $10 million to the Duke Science and Technology Initiative in 2021.

References