• San Jose Mercury News , Friday, December 26, 2008 10 AM

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Apple's announcement that Phil Schiller, its SVP of worldwide marketing, will take Steve Jobs' place on the stage at next month's Macworld conference has wags wagging about who might succeed him somewhere down the road should he need to be succeeded which, of course, is nothing but speculation. But let's play the game with the Merc's Troy Wolverton.

Schiller, 48, has 17 years of marketing and management experience at Apple and is very tuned in to its culture, says Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry. But he's weak on operations and product design and, as Enderle Group's Rob Enderle says, "doesn"t have the charisma that Steve has."

Then again, who does?

COO Tim Cook, also 48, is "probably the most logical choice" to succeed Jobs, says analyst Tim Bajarin, but Enderle says he's "kind of dull." Marketing and design are not his strong suits.

Ron Johnson, 50, SVP/retail, has spearheaded Apple's successful push into storefronts but he operates under the radar and has no background in technology or product design. Bill Campbell, 68, co-lead director at Apple and chairman of Intuit, "clearly has Apple in his DNA," says Bajarin. But that DNA is getting up in years.

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