Ap­ple Inc be­gan a new era last week Thurs­day with­out Steve Jobs as chief ex­ec­u­tive, a mo­men­tous shift that sur­prised in­vestors, but bare­ly dent­ed con­fi­dence in the near-term out­look for the stock. In an­nounc­ing that he could no longer ful­fill his du­ties, Jobs stepped away from his CEO du­ties and cleared the way for Tim Cook to take over lead­er­ship of one of the world's best known and valu­able com­pa­nies. Cook, 50, must now con­vince in­vestors that Jobs' vi­sion and spir­it have been in­sti­tu­tion­alised with­in Ap­ple, a com­pa­ny that rev­o­lu­tionised en­ter­tain­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its iPod, iPad and iPhone de­vices.

Jobs has been on med­ical leave since Jan­u­ary, and has had to take time off on sev­er­al past oc­ca­sions be­cause of ill­ness. He has bat­tled pan­cre­at­ic can­cer since 2004 and un­der­went a liv­er trans­plant two years ago. He will stay on as chair­man. "In­vestors are com­ing to the re­al­i­sa­tion that this is a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion. It may have al­ready been built in­to Ap­ple's val­u­a­tion," said Hen­di Su­san­to, a Gabel­li and Com­pa­ny an­a­lyst. Ap­ple's shares were down less than two per cent in ear­ly trad­ing last week Thurs­day, show­ing more re­silience than when the de­par­ture was ini­tial­ly an­nounced late last week Wednes­day.

"Over the course of last year, in­vestors have be­come more com­fort­able with the idea of life af­ter Jobs," said Bill Kre­her, an an­a­lyst with Ed­ward Jones.

"I think it is en­cour­ag­ing that he will re­main with the com­pa­ny as chair­man, but the re­al sto­ry is that Tim Cook has emerged as a ca­pa­ble suc­ces­sor." Jobs, who has fought a rare form of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, is deemed the heart and soul of a com­pa­ny that be­came the most valu­able in the world for a brief pe­ri­od this year. "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," Jobs wrote in a brief let­ter an­nounc­ing his res­ig­na­tion. While it is un­like­ly that his de­par­ture as CEO will de­rail Ap­ple's am­bi­tious prod­uct-launch roadmap in the near term, there are con­cerns about whether the com­pa­ny will be as cre­ative with­out its founder and vi­sion­ary at the helm.

Jobs' bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, which has stretched over sev­er­al years, has been of deep con­cern to Ap­ple fans, in­vestors and the com­pa­ny's board. Over the past two years, even board mem­bers have con­fid­ed to friends their con­cern that Jobs, in his quest for pri­va­cy, was not be­ing forth­com­ing with di­rec­tors about the true con­di­tion of his health.Wall Street al­so want­ed a clear­er pic­ture of plans at Ap­ple.

"I think a lack of clar­i­ty of its suc­ces­sion plan in the past has been a dis­trac­tion so we ap­pre­ci­ate that this plan rep­re­sents a smooth and or­der­ly tran­si­tion," Kre­her said. Jobs, 56, has been on med­ical leave since Jan­u­ary 17, with his du­ties be­ing filled by Cook, who was chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer.

Health-re­lat­ed ab­sences

Jobs had briefly emerged from his med­ical leave in March to un­veil the lat­est ver­sion of the iPad and lat­er to at­tend a din­ner host­ed by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma for tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers in Sil­i­con Val­ley. But his of­ten-gaunt ap­pear­ance had sparked ques­tions about how bad his ill­ness was, and his abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue at Ap­ple. Cook, a for­mer Com­paq ex­ec­u­tive and an ac­knowl­edged mas­ter of sup­ply-chain man­age­ment, has tak­en over the helm in each of Jobs' three health-re­lat­ed ab­sences. One Sil­i­con Val­ley CEO, who de­clined to be iden­ti­fied be­cause of the sen­si­tive is­sues in­volved, said the tone of Jobs' state­ment in­di­cat­ed his health may be worse than feared. The Ap­ple chief­tain has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for com­mand­ing every as­pect of op­er­a­tions-from day-to-day run­ning to broad strate­gic de­ci­sions-sug­gest­ing he would not give up the job if he had a choice.

"It's re­al­ly sad," the CEO told Reuters. "No one is look­ing at this as a busi­ness thing, but as a hu­man thing. No one thinks that Steve is just step­ping aside be­cause he just doesn't want to be CEO of Ap­ple any­more." "It feels like an­oth­er shoe is go­ing to drop." Brand re­search com­pa­ny Mill­ward Brown said Ap­ple's brand, which it val­ues at over US$153 bil­lion, should re­main in­tact. "Steve Jobs res­ig­na­tion from Ap­ple is sad for him as it pre­sum­ably presages more ill­ness. How­ev­er he has left the Ap­ple Brand in rude health so that the com­pa­ny is still poised for fu­ture growth," glob­al brands di­rec­tor Pe­ter Wal­she wrote. "The fu­ture di­rec­tion is mapped out, the suc­ces­sor is in place (al­so a de­sign­er by back­ground), and con­sumers rate the brand unique­ly 'cre­ative,' 'fun' and 'ad­ven­tur­ous.'"

'Artists' touch'

While Jobs did not give de­tails on the state of his health, on­col­o­gists who have not treat­ed the Ap­ple founder said he could be fac­ing sev­er­al prob­lems tied to his rare form of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and sub­se­quent liv­er trans­plant. Such prob­lems in­clude pos­si­ble hor­mone im­bal­ances or a re­cur­rence of can­cer that is hard­er to fight once the body has al­ready been weak­ened. "Steve Jobs is the most suc­cess­ful CEO in the US of the last 25 years," Google Inc chair­man Er­ic Schmidt said in a state­ment.

"He unique­ly com­bined an artist's touch and an en­gi­neer's vi­sion to build an ex­tra­or­di­nary com­pa­ny."

Nokia CEO Stephen El­op said in a state­ment: "Steve Jobs is a vi­sion­ary in the com­put­ing in­dus­try. We look for­ward to both Steve and his team hav­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact on our in­dus­try for many years to come." El­op was ap­point­ed last year to lead Nokia's fight­back against Ap­ple, whose iPhone posed a chal­lenge that the world's biggest cell­phone mak­er has yet to meet. An­a­lysts again ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the Ap­ple bench, head­ed by sup­ply-chain maven Cook.

(Reuters)