Since returning to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs' leadership has been masterful, bringing Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and turning it into one of the most valuable companies in the world. And with that backdrop, the Financial Times recently named Jobs the recipient of the "Financial Times' Person of the Year" award.
It’s been a helluva year for Apple. The company, at long last, released their take on a tablet in the form of theiPad. There was the whole fiasco involving the missing/stolen iPhone 4, and of course, there were product refreshes such as a new design for the MacBook Air. Toss in record breaking Mac sales and a stock price that continues to thrust upwards, and Apple’s 2010 is arguably Apple’s most successful to date. Indeed, if financial success is the only metric we care about, then 2010 was emphatically Apple’s most successful year.
And leading the charge, per usual, is Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Since returning to the company in 1997, Jobs’ leadership has been masterful, bringing Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and turning it into one of the most valuable companies in the world. And with that backdrop, the Financial Times recently named Jobs the recipient of the “Financial Times’ Person of the Year” award.
A rebuttal of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s much-quoted aphorism that there are no second acts in American life does not come more decisively than this. When Steven Paul Jobs first hit the headlines, he was younger even than Mark Zuckerberg is now. Long before it was cool to be a nerd, his formative role in popularising the personal computer, and Apple’s initial public offering on Wall Street – which came when Mr Jobs was still only 25 – made him the tech industry’s first rock star.Now, three decades on, he has secured his place in the foremost ranks of the West Coast tech titans who have done so much to shape the world around the turn of the millennium.
And the scary thing is that Apple still has so much more room for growth, both in the mainstream PC market and even in the smartphone market. Since returning to Apple, Jobs has shown an uncanny ability to keep his hand on the pulse of mainstream America vis a vis technology. From the iPod to the iPhone and the iPad, Apple keeps changing the tech landscape in fundamental and tangible ways. Say what you will about Jobs and his management style, but there’s simply no denying that with him at the helm at Apple, the company has not only reached new heights, but is poised to climb even higher and achieve even more.
