There’s been a lot of worry that the options backdating scandal will mean the end of Steve Jobs as we know it. Frankly, I’m not so sure that this is the case, but I suppose anything is possible. But, as we’ve touched on before, who could possibly replace the Chief Oompa-Loompa himself?
Douglas A. McIntyre, a partner at 24/7 Wall St., compiled this list over at Blogging Stocks:
Okay, there isn’t a Steve Jobs among them—but then again, I don’t think we could reasonably expect to see another Jobs in our lifetime. But is it just me, or do most of these candidates elicit nothing more than a bland sigh? Sure, from a Wall St. perspective, you need someone strong running the company, and I feel like I’d prefer Tim Cook or Tony Fedell over anyone else.
Then, on the other hand, maybe they should bring back Woz. Woz for CEO!
[via digg]
Tony Faddell? Are you insane??
I thought I heard that Jonathan Ive (Apple Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design) was also spotted as a potential successor.
If there is one Apple exec who I would like to see leave is Phil Schiller. The guy is an absolute bore to listen to and he often time sounds like he doesn't even believe what he is saying (just reading out a canned speech).
Tim Cook needs to stay where he is since operations is his forte. Plus he would put too many people to sleep when they hear his drawl for a few minutes.
Ive's is nowhere near CEO capable plus he too is best left at what he does best which is product design.
Faddell? AHAHAHAHA!
Allchin? Uh, the guy hates Mac's with a passion. He just barely tolerated the Mac BU.
Campbell? Uh no. I think the worst thing for Apple is to have former Apple executives from the earlier years leading Apple (Jobs as co-founder is one of those exceptions) mainly because many key Apple execs at the time were riding a wave of luck and were fairly incompetent within Apple. The excess and arrogance of many is what eventually led to Apple being completely dysfunctional by the time Spindler was ousted.
York would be too much of a square and would need an exceptional mouthpiece (aka spokesperson) to even appeal to Apple's image.
Thompson is also a sales guy (like Schiller) but is also a product of the old IBM days and would be a lousy match. I remember from my OS/2 days how ineffective he and his team were at the time with marketing OS/2. Most of the pitch was done at the grassroots level with both users (similarly fanatical as Mac users we were) and chief OS/2 demonstrator David Barnes who had the technical smarts but also the passionate zeal where it was hard to believe he was an IBM employee (remember back then, IBM was typically corporate with the whole suit image).
Don't know much about Sue Decker to comment.
As for Woz, I know that was a joke but he would be a horrible CEO. The guy even said so himself that he is a tinkerer.
Apple would need someone a bit more charismatic, young, but also tech saavy and business smart. My candidate would be Sun Micro CEO Jonathan Schwartz (ponytail and all). He still has time to prove himself at Sun.