Apple says Steve Jobs resigning as CEO

Steve Jobs (AP)

Asso­ci­ated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Jobs, the mind behind the iPhone, iPad and other devices that turned Apple Inc. into one of the world’s most pow­er­ful com­pa­nies, resigned as the company’s CEO on Wednes­day, say­ing he can no longer han­dle the job.

The move appears to be the result of an unspec­i­fied med­ical con­di­tion for which he took an indef­i­nite leave from his post in Jan­u­ary. Apple’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, Tim Cook, has been named CEO.

In a let­ter addressed to Apple’s board and the “Apple com­mu­nity,” Jobs said he “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’ health has long been a con­cern for Apple investors who see him as an indus­try ora­cle who seems to know what con­sumers want long before they do. After his announce­ment, Apple stock quickly fell 5.4 per­cent in after-hours trading.

The com­pany said Jobs gave the board his res­ig­na­tion Wednes­day and sug­gested Cook be named the company’s new leader. Apple said Jobs was elected board chair­man and Cook is becom­ing a mem­ber of its board.

Jobs’ hits seemed to grow big­ger as the years went on: After the col­or­ful iMac com­puter and the now-ubiquitous iPod, the iPhone rede­fined the cat­e­gory of smart phones and the iPad all but cre­ated the mar­ket for tablet computers.

His own aura seemed part of the attrac­tion. On stage at trade shows and com­pany events in his uni­form of jeans, sneak­ers and black mock-turtlenecks, he’d entrance audi­ences with new devices, new col­ors, new soft­ware fea­tures, build­ing up to a gran finale he’d pre­dictably pref­ace by say­ing, “One more thing.”

Jobs, 56, shep­herded Apple from a two-man startup to Sil­i­con Val­ley dar­ling when the Apple II, the first com­puter for reg­u­lar peo­ple to really catch on, sent IBM Corp. and oth­ers scram­bling to get their own PCs to market.

After Apple suf­fered slump in the mid-1980s, he was forced out of the com­pany. He was CEO at Next, another com­puter com­pany, and Pixar, the computer-animation com­pany that pro­duced “Toy Story” on his watch, dur­ing the 10 years before he returned.

The Jan­u­ary leave was Jobs’ third med­ical leave over sev­eral years. He had pre­vi­ously sur­vived pan­cre­atic can­cer and received a liver transplant.

Posted by AP News on Aug 24 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.