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Is Apple Preparing A Jobs Succession Plan?

GigaOm's Om Malik claims that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is worth about $20 billion of the company's $80 billion market cap. "Jobs gets a premium because he is the Pied Piper who makes it all come together, and that is why Apple shareholders need a rock-solid succession plan," Malik says. Jobs is only 53, but he was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer in 2004. The tumor was successfully removed later that year, but rumors of the cancer's reemergence have surfaced several times since.

It may not be pretty or nice, but Malik definitely has a point about a succession plan for Jobs. The Apple CEO is most definitely the face of the franchise; without him, the company's stock price would certainly drop. Meanwhile, the company's recent decision to have marketing vice-president Philip Schiller deliver the final keynote address at the annual Macworld conference instead of Jobs has raised a fresh round of rumors about the Apple CEO's health.

As Vijay Rakesh, a ThinkPanmure analyst, tells Wired, "The company can be a little more open about what's happening with Steve Jobs," said. "It'd help everybody put some uncertainty to rest." Rakesh believes whether due to his health or not, Apple is probably in the midst of developing a new executive team, which will gradually transition Jobs out of his role as CEO in the next six months or so.

Read the whole story at GigaOm/Wired »

1 comment about "Is Apple Preparing A Jobs Succession Plan? ".
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  1. of of, December 19, 2008 at 1:50 p.m.

    Believe it. It's a "security" issue. Steve Jobs and his gang have committed so many acts of perjury and fraud, that they need maximum security now in order to protect them from getting legally served with even more lawsuits.
    Even when he does get served by courts, they somehow weasel him out of it and he is able to somehow not show up to court and get away with it.

    On another note, I am flabergasted by the sheer number of computer illiterates still out there.

    People, Apple is just a marketing company and that's all.

    I am truly amazed that people buy these obsolete buggy iGarbage from apple...Hats off to their marketing department for conning and brainwashing so many idiots out there...But, I bought an HP iPaq for a couple of hundred dollars - it came with a phone, full featured GPS with voice directions, and oh yea a full Windows Mobile OS long before Crapple's iPhone ever existed.

    And why would anyone pay over $3000 for a crippled, obsolete-out-of the box Apple Mac OS X computer? I bought an HP pavillion laptop, fully loaded, with DVD/Blue Ray, Super Hi-res wide screen, 2 Gig RAM, HD Tuner, built-in web cam etc. etc. etc. for under $1000

    And Apple Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD, an open-source Unix look-alike, available FREE for the PC back in 1992, with a artsy-fartsy GUI. Whoopy Doo..

    It is too expensive, too buggy, and the only software available is a bunch of dinky puzzles written by 14 year olds. No engineering or scientific applications available for "Mac OS X"...

    Apple has a long history of fraud, racism and corruption...Steve Jobs and Nancy Heinen (and her shyster subordinates) are both knowing criminal participants in the stock options scam, and were caught trying to cover it up.

    They were caught red-handed in early 2006 when a former employee who was cheated out of all of his stock after being wrongfully dismissed, filed a lawsuit against Apple Con-puter.
    In short, dont waste your time and money on apple...
    As for the news that he is dying: Good Riddance for all the misery Steve Jobs and his gang of uneducated delusional self-important iRetards at Apple brought us.
    I mean ALL of them. Peter Graffagnino, Scott Forstall, their crooked HR department and their so-called "engineers" (highschool dropouts)

    We will never forget what happened....

    PS: If Apple was supposed to be "invulnerable" to viruses, why are there so many security fixes being passed around? Even with all of Apple's virus and spyware vulnerabilities...which i'Tard would target a virus against an con-puter "OS" used by 2% of people out there?

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