No beating around the bush on this one, Steve Jobs has resigned:
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
The news shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Jobs has been been dealing with health problems for many years now and he’s had to scale back his involvement with the company as a result. The appointment of Tim Cook as the new CEO shouldn’t come as a surprise either as Cook has been acting as the interim CEO when Jobs has been absence during the past few years. Jobs’ involvement in Apple won’t completely cease either if the board approves his appointment which I doubt they’ll think twice about doing. The question on everyone’s lips is, of course, where Apple will go to from here.
The stock market understandably reacted quite negatively with Apple shares coming down a whopping 5.23% a the time of writing. The reasons behind this are many but primarily it comes down to the fact that Apple, for better or for worse, has built much of their image around their iconic CEO. Jobs has also had strong influences over the design of new products but Cook, whilst being more than capable of stepping up, has no such skills being more of a traditional operations guy. Of course no idea exists in a vacuum and I’m sure the talented people at Apple will be more than capable of continuing to deliver winning products just as they did with Jobs at the helm.
But will that be enough?
For the most part I’d say yes. Whilst the Jobs fan club might be one of the loudest and proudest out there the vast majority of Apple users are just interested in the end product. Whilst they might lose Jobs’ vision for product design (although even that’s debatable since he’s still on the board) Apple has enough momentum with their current line of products to carry them over any rough patches whilst they find their feet in a post Jobs world. The stock market’s reaction is no indicator of consumer confidence for Apple and I’m sure there’s only a minority of people who’ve decided to stop buying Apple products now that Jobs isn’t at the helm.
Apple’s current success is undeniably because of Jobs’ influence and his absence will prove to be a challenge for Apple to overcome. I highly doubt that Apple will suffer much because of this (the share price really only affects the traders and speculators) with a year or two of products in the pipeline that Jobs would have presided over. The question is will their new CEO, or any public face of Apple, be able to cultivate a similar image on the same level as Jobs did.
