Steve Jobs, the iconic founder of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), passed five years ago, just one day after the company introduced Siri on the new IPhone 4s. In his absence, the enterprise has spiraled forward to become more profitable than ever.
The charismatic and controversial visionary served as the chairman of Apple’s board since he founded the company. He was often the first and always the last to approve the company’s products until his last day. He was 56 years old when cancer took him to his final rest.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has led the enterprise since Oct. 2011, paid tribute to his mentor on Twitter. “Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” he wrote a famous Jobs quote as a way of “remembering Steve and the many ways he changed our world.”
Apple set up a web page to remember Jobs where anyone could share a story about the entrepreneur many considered as a modern day Thomas Edison.
Jobs put Apple on the path to greatness
Jobs turned the company around and pushed the envelope of what was possible at the time for a tech company. He made important upgrades to computers, changed the phone market forever with the release of the first iPhone, introduce the first desktop without a PC, and showed tablets could be viable with the iPad.
And the single thing every Apple employee agrees about Jobs is that he had a keen ability to push the ones under his command beyond their limits.
Cook has resigned to comparing himself against Steve in an industry where judging another CEO’s accomplishments is a regular business. “To me, Steve’s not replaceable, by anyone,” Cook said in an interview in August with The Washington Post.
Post-Jobs era: Apple became the world’s biggest company
Many wonder what the company would look like if Jobs would still be alive. Under Cook, Apple has taken a softer tone and shy away from the winner-take-all attitude that defines Jobs’ era as chief executive.
The CEO, however, has made his mark. Fortune magazine considered him as the greatest leader in the planet in March 2016.
Mr. Cook seized control of a groundbreaking company and turned it into the world’s largest corporation, with over 1 billion active devices since January 2016.
Even when Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ: onSSNLF) is currently at the top of the smartphone sales, Tim Cook took Apple’s shares from a solid $54 per stock to a recent $132,5 in May 2015, when the company reached an all-time high value.
Apple has kept on point since then. The iPhone 6 and 6s became their top best-sellers, with over 100 million units sold. Cook also expanded the business into the Apple Watch, the Apple Pay, Apple music; and made steps to innovate in healthcare, music streaming and cloud services.
Cook, Like Jobs, has commanded Apple’s obsession with secrecy and has made billions in profit by selling expensive devices that make people talk. In his way, Cook pushes the same strategies as his predecessor.
His disposal to fight is on full display in his ongoing battle against Samsung. The top smartphone rivals have been feuding over patents since 2011 on the Supreme Court when the Cupertino company sued Samsung for alleged infringement of the iPhone’s trademark appearance.
Source: NBC