14 DAY TRIAL // People who are in contact with the high-ups at Apple on a regular basis say the company’s chief executive is still doing his bit for the company some six months into a medical leave granted to Steve Jobs for an undetermined period of time.
In 2009, Steve Jobs had entered a medical leave for a specified duration.
That didn’t happen this year, when the cancer-surviving CEO addressed fellow Apple employees with an open letter explaining that the company’s board of directors had granted him a medical leave of absence, the third one in the past seven years.
Jobs has been on leave for the better part of this year, but that didn’t stop COO Tim Cook to propel the company’s stock above the $400 mark.
During their last quarterly meeting, Apple executives reported a record revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion.
The Mac maker now has $76 billion in the bank. That’s more cash than the U.S. Treasury balance ($74 billion).
"Apple's dealing with this situation in their own unique manner," says Joel Achramowicz, an analyst with Blaylock Robert Van.
“[Tim Cook] is the operating executive, but Steve Jobs is still involved. It's an unconventional approach. With other companies, you might expect the board to require the CEO to take a true and complete leave of absence. Not here. But then, Apple's just being Apple," said Achramowicz, according to the MercuryNews.com.
Analyst Tim Bajarin, with Creative Strategies, chimes in to add:
"I don't think you can draw too much from the length of the absence. We saw him at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and to me he looked the same as he did in March when he introduced the iPad 2.”
Many, however, would disagree. Even though it’s tough to decide whether or not Jobs looks any worse than before, he certainly doesn’t show much improvement either.
“I think the process he's going through is recuperative, which means he probably needs to be more at home and less physically active. But I don't believe that's diminished his role in any way," added Bajarin.
The analyst said he frequently talked to the upper management at Apple.
His conversations with the high-ups at 1 Infinite Loop have led him to believe that Mr. Jobs is still very involved with daily operations.
"They tell me he calls in regularly. He talks to Tim, he talks to the top guys, he talks about the Apple stores," Bajarin said.
"But while he used to micromanage everything in ways that most CEOs would not, right down to issues with the company cafeteria, the big change with his latest leave is that there's less micromanagement and more management of his executive team and the big-picture issues," noted Bajarin.