Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple
Since Steve Jobs last appeared at D in 2005, his status as America’s rock star CEO has only grown. Apple has been on a roll, retaining its overwhelming market share for both the iPod portable media player and the iTunes online media store. Sales of its Macintosh computers have risen sharply, far faster than the overall industry growth rate. The company has also launched Apple TV, which aims to simply and inexpensively connect the TV to the computer and all the video content online. And, as D5 convenes, Apple is about to ship its first cellphone, the highly touted, but rarely seen, iPhone. Like Bill Gates, Jobs is a genuine founding father of the digital world. But, like its nemesis Microsoft, Apple faces challenges. The complex cellphone market could be harder to navigate than any other the company has entered. Apple TV, too, has a swarm of competitors. The apparent unraveling of copy protection for legal music downloads, a move Jobs helped spur, could weaken the ties between iTunes, the iPod and music lovers. And, while Apple continues to be well-positioned at the junction of hardware, software, Web services and media, it may be getting stretched thin. It had to postpone the launch of its new Leopard operating system by four months to divert engineers to the iPhone project.
