Who can replace Steve Jobs?

Apple is often seen synonymous with its CEO Steve Jobs. The company's charismatic CEO is regarded as Apple's face and soul by many. In fact, till a few months back it was tough to imagine Apple without its CEO Steve Jobs. Little doubt then that the news about Steve Jobs taking a medical leave sent the company's stocks plummeting.

The investors as well as the analysts linked the company's fortune with Jobs’ health. Most couldn't comprehend an Apple without Steve Jobs. However, Jobs’ five-month long medical leave seems to have changed the perception somewhat. Analysts believe that investors have gotten comfortable with Apple's management team as well as their ability to run the company without Jobs' oversight.

But the big question still remains: in case the CEO Jobs retires due to health or other reasons who will replace him? Who can sustain Apple's glory? So far Apple has been silent on any succession plan.

Fortune magazine listed the men who can fit into CEO Jobs’ shoes. Here's over to Apple's potential CEOs.

Timothy D Cook (Chief operating officer)

The top contender for the post of Apple's next CEO is Timothy D Cook, Apple's Chief operating officer.

Responsible for the company's worldwide sales and operations, he was the man in-charge for running Apple when Steve Jobs went on medical leave this year in January. In 2004 too when Jobs underwent surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer, Cook rightly filled his place.

An IBM & Compaq veteran, Cook was brought on in 1998 to overhaul Apple’s inefficient manufacturing and logistics. At the time, the company’s Macintosh customers were switching to cheaper machines from Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co.

Born in Mobile, Alabama, Cook earned an engineering degree from Auburn University and went on to do Master's of Business Administration from Duke University in North Carolina.

He sits on the board at Nike Inc, the world’s largest maker of sneakers, and is an avid biker. Cook also has a passion for cycling.

Ron Johnson (Senior vice president, retail)

Another potential successor to Steve Jobs is Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president, retail.

Johnson, who joined in January 2000, reports directly to CEO Steve Jobs. Johnson leads Apple's retail strategy and is responsible for its overall execution and performance.

Having spent more than 20 years of experience in retail and merchandising, Johnson is credited for opening over 200 Apple stores. Before joining Apple, Johnson held various management positions at the Target Corporation, most recently as Vice President of Merchandising for Target Stores.

Johnson did MBA from Harvard and his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University.

Philip W Schiller (Senior vice president, worldwide product marketing)

Another contender for the Apple's top job is Philip W Schiller, credited for delivering Apple's most popular products, including iPhone, iPod, Safari and Macbook.

Schiller is Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing and reports directly to Steve Jobs. A member of Apple’s executive team, he is responsible for the company’s product marketing, developer relations, and business marketing programs.

Prior to Apple, Schiller served as Vice President of Product Marketing at Macromedia, Inc of San Francisco, as Director of Product Marketing at FirePower Systems, Inc of Menlo Park, as an Information Technology Manager at Nolan, Norton & Company of Lexington, and as a Programmer and Systems Analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Having over twenty four years of marketing and management experience, Schiller graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Boston College in 1982.

Scott Forstall (Senior vice president, iPhone software)

Having joined Apple in the year 1997, alongwith Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, Senior vice president, iPhone software, is another key contender for Apple's CEO post.

Forstall leads the team responsible for delivering software of Apple iPhone including the user interface, applications, frameworks and operating system.

Forstall is credited for the original architects of Mac OS X and its Aqua user interface. He was responsible for several releases of the operating system, most importantly Mac OS X Leopard. Before Apple, he worked at NeXT developing core technologies.

Forstall received both a Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Jonathan Ive (Senior vice president, industrial design)

The man credited for designing key Apple products, Jonathan Ive, senior vice president, industrial design, too figures in the potential CEO's list.

Joining Apple in 1996, London born designer Jonathan Ive has been responsible for leading Apple's design team.

Ive holds a Bachelor of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Newcastle Polytechnic. In 2003 he was named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum London and awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts.

Peter Oppenheimer (Chief financial officer)

Another prime contender for the job of Apple CEO is chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer. Joining Apple in July 1996, Oppenheimer has been CFO of the company since June 2004. Oppenheimer has also served Apple as vice president and corporate controller and as senior director of finance for Americas.

In his capacity as CFO, Oppenheimer oversees the controller, treasury, investor relations, tax, information systems, internal audit and facilities functions. He reports to the CEO and serves on the company’s executive committee.

Prior to joining Apple, Oppenheimer was CFO of one of the four business units for Automatic Data Processing, Inc (ADP). Before that, Oppenheimer spent six years in the Information Technology Consulting Practice with Coopers and Lybrand.

Oppenheimer received a bachelors degree from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara, both with honors.

Bertrand Serlet (Senior vice president, software engineering)

Another front runner for the Apple CEO's post is the company's senior vice president of software engineering, Bertrand Serlet.

Credited for the release of Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard, Serlet is responsible for leading Apple's Software Engineering group. He reports directly to Steve Jobs.

Having joined Apple in 1997, Serlet has played a key role in the definition, development and creation of Mac OS X. As vice president of Platform Technology, Serlet managed the largest part of the Mac OS software engineering group. Prior to joining Apple, Serlet spent 4 years at Xerox PARC and then joined NeXT in 1989.

Serlet holds a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Orsay, France.

Sina Tamaddon (Senior vice president, applications)

Another NeXT veteran who is said to possess the capability to fit into Steve Jobs' shoes is Sina Tamaddon, senior vice president, applications.

Tamaddon joined Apple in 1997, the same year when Steve Jobs came back to Apple. He has also been the company's senior vice president, worldwide service and support, and vice president and general manager, Newton Group.

Before joining Apple, Tamaddon was NeXT's vice president, Europe from September 1996 through March 1997. From August 1994 to August 1996, Tamaddon was vice president, professional services with NeXT.

Daniel Cooperman (Senior vice president, general counsel and secretary)

Apple's chief legal officer, Daniel Cooperman, too is said to be in the race for Apple's CEO job.

Responsible for Apple’s legal department, Cooperman looks into worldwide legal policies, corporate governance, securities compliance, commercial licensing, intellectual property, employment law, litigation, patent law, mergers and acquisitions and legal support for Apple’s various business units. Cooperman also manages Apple’s Government Affairs and Global Security groups.

Cooperman came to Apple from Oracle in November 2007, where he was General Counsel. He was with Oracle for 11 years. Cooperman currently serves on the Board of Directors of Business Software Alliance, a trade association in the software industry. He is president of the Association of General Counsel and is on the Advisory Council for the Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School.

Before Oracle, he was a partner with the San Francisco-based law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen (now known as Bingham McCutchen), and served as chair of the firm's 65-lawyer Business & Transactions Group and managing partner of the San Jose office.

Bob Mansfield (Senior vice president, Mac hardware engineering)

The man credited for delivering Mac products, Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh Hardware Engineering, too figures in the list of potential Apple CEOs.

Reporting to Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, Bob oversees the team that has delivered products including MacBook Air and the all-in-one iMac line.

Prior to joining Apple in 1999, Bob was vice president of Engineering at Raycer Graphics, which Apple acquired. Previously, Mansfield was a senior director at SGI, responsible for the development of various microprocessor designs.

Mansfield earned a BSEE degree from The University of Texas at Austin in 1982.

Indiatimes

Now pay your bills through an SMS

Making a payment can just be an SMS away, thanks to the latest offering by mChek that allows consumers to make payments through their mobile phones. mChek, a company that has developed several patent-pending applications in the areas of security and banking announced the launch of mChek/Payment.

mChek/Payment enables consumers to shop with their mobile phones in a convenient and safe manner, either across the counter or with remote merchants. The service enables consumers to easily link their mobile phone with their existing credit card without any software to be installed on their mobile, and subsequently transact on the Internet, call centers or over a simple SMS.

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has signed up with mChek to offer its post paid subscribers in Karnataka, to make payments by using this application. "Our consistent focus on innovation has enabled us to connect with customers strongly. Services like mChek revolve around Airtel's philosophy to delight customers with newer technologies," said Venkatesh V, CEO, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, Karnataka.

BIGFlix.com, a part of Reliance BIG Entertainment, an online and offline movie rental service has also joined hands with mChek to enhance its value proposition for its customers. Kamal Gianchandani, Chief Operating Officer, BIGFlix.com, said, "Today the mobile platform is the fastest growing platform and the most personalized form of marketing to reach customers. Our partnership with mChek will definitely get us one step closer to our customers and ensure faster and convenient value added services."

Through this new application, mChek is all set to transform the way people live by making use of electronic money. Do you know 'How mChek transformed the lives of these people?'

Agencies

Can MS takes on Google with free Office software?

Microsoft will release a free version of its dominant Office software that users can access over the Web, catching up with products that arch rival Google launched three years ago.

The world’s largest software maker will offer a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program with the same look and feel of their counterparts in the Office suites that it sells for personal computers.

It is the latest salvo in an intensifying war between the two technology giants. Google announced plans last week to challenge Windows with a free operating system. Microsoft introduced a new search engine, dubbed Bing, last month, that has taken a small amount of market share from Google.

A free version of Office could hurt sales of Microsoft's top-selling and most profitable business unit. One of Office's most popular titles is a home version that sells for $150. It includes the four programs that Microsoft will give away.

“Microsoft is in a tough spot. Their competition isn't just undercutting them. They are giving away the competitive product,” said Sheri McLeish, an analyst with Forrester Research. The Office division rang up operating profit of $9.3 billion in the first three quarters of the software maker's current fiscal year. — Reuters

McLeish said she expects Microsoft to overtake Google in the market as the hundreds of millions of people who use Office flock to try out the Internet version.

Microsoft will seek to make money by using it to lead those users to its ad-supported websites, including the Bing search engine. Analysts have said that Bing's early signs of success suggest Microsoft may be rounding the corner in efforts to turn around its money-losing Internet division.

Microsoft will release the free offering when it starts selling Office 2010, it next major release of the product, sometime in the first half of next year. Its current version came out in January 2007.

The software maker unveiled an early release on Monday at a conference for business partners in New Orleans. It will be distributed to tens of thousands of testers.

Company spokeswoman Janice Kapner said the free Web version will provide "a very rich experience" and probably have more functionality than Google.

Office 2010 is among a wave of upgrades to Microsoft programs planned over the next year. A new version of its ubiquitous Windows operating system is coming out in October and a new version of its widely used email server is also in the works.

Microsoft also plans two other Internet versions of Office for businesses.

It will host one of them at its own data centers, charging a yet-to-be-announced fee for that service. Businesses with premium service contracts will have the choice of running the Web-based version from their own data centers at no extra cost.

Agencies

Has Siemens IT arm sacked over 500 as Union claims?

IT firm Siemens Information Systems, a unit of German conglomerate Siemens, today said it has laid off 128 employees as part of its cost cutting measures, debunking union's claim that 500 employees had lost jobs.

The IT-ITeS union UNITES India said the number of employees laid off by the company could be around 500. It added that Siemens is laying off its employees in Bangalore violating the Industrial Dispute Act.

When contacted SISL spokesperson said, "As a part of our cost-cutting initiatives, we have released only 128 employees from one of the business units."

UNITES Professionals India General Secretary Karthik Shekhar said, "The figures provided by the company does not include the number of employees who were on contract. In the last one month, the company has laid off more than 128 employees."

SISL has over 5,500 employees in the country. The union has also written to the headquarters of the firm in Germany.

About compensating the employees, the company said it has already compensated the affected employees higher than the contractual terms.
AGENCIES

Agencies

Will GM coninue to layoff another 4,000 jobs?

After a night spent signing mounds of paperwork authorizing the transfer of cash, real estate, technology and other property, GM attorneys are expected to officially usher the new General Motors out of bankruptcy protection on Friday and onto a path toward a hopefully profitable future.

Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, the troubled company is expected to emerge cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans. Spurred on by the Obama administration's support, the process took just 40 days, even slightly quicker than crosstown rival Chrysler Group LLC's 42-day timeframe.

On Thursday, a bankruptcy court order allowing GM to sell most of its assets to a new company went into effect. The new GM, 61% owned by the US government, will face a brutally competitive global automotive market in the middle of the worst sales slump in a quarter-century.

At a press conference on Friday, CEO Fritz Henderson will announce that GM will cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs, including 450 top executives. The company still employs 88,000 people in the US and 235,000 worldwide.

Agencies

Did an Indian surrender domain name to Google?

Internet search giant Google has won a cybersquatting case at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) against an Indian who had tried to block the domain name 'googblog.com'.

According to the information available with the WIPO, Geneva-based WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has ordered the transfer of domain name to the US-based search giant after Herit Shah of Gujarat offered to surrender the disputed name to Google.

Google had challenged the registering of domain name 'googblog.com' by Shah at WIPO stating that it was confusingly similar to its trademark on which the company has rights.

Cybersquatting is an illegal activity of buying and officially recording an address on the internet that is the name of an existing company or a well-known person, with the intention of selling it to the owner in order to make money.

As per the information available with the WIPO, Google filed the complaint against Shah on March 26 this year. However, the disputed name has been registered by Shah since September 25, 2008.

WIPO is a specialised agency of the United Nations for developing a balanced and accessible international system in the field of intellectual property rights.

The California-headquartered firm has been using the name 'GOOG' as a NASDAQ financial stock ticker since 2004. The company has used the trademark GOOGLE since the inception of its business in 1997.

The search giant operates a blog service under the brand 'Blogger'.

As per the details available with WIPO, a pre-complaint correspondence between the parties (Google and Shah) failed to resolve the dispute.

However on May 2, after commencement of administrative proceedings, Shah stated before the panel that the registration of domain name was in bad faith and was an infringement of intellectual property.

"I was in a bad faith that I can legally keep the domain googblog.com ... I really did very unfair to Google. I sincerely apologise to Google for infringement, misuse of their intellectual property (GOOGBLOG.COM)," Shah stated.

The WIPO panel found in this case the consent-to-transfer request replaces the need to assess the matter under the elements of its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and ordered the transfer of the domain name to Google.

Agencies

Will Google-Microsoft war cut down PC prices?

Google Inc's bid to compete with Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system may help lower the cost of personal computers at a time when prices are already being pinched by inexpensive netbooks.

Google said it will offer its just-announced Chrome operating system for free when it is launched in the second half of 2010, a move that could force Microsoft into a price war.

Although Windows is the dominant operating system -- installed on 90 percent of the world's PCs, Microsoft won't take Google's challenge lightly, analysts said. Its new Windows 7 operating system will be available in October.

"Microsoft's strategy is likely to be to compete on price," said Brent Williams, an analyst with the Benchmark Co. "Now there's a competitor with the muscle and the brand recognition. Google is that company."

Google said Chrome OS, which is based on the open-source Linux code, is being designed for all PCs but will debut on netbooks. It makes sense for Google to initially target the stripped-down, Web-centric netbooks, one of the only segments showing any growth in a PC market that is contracting.

Netbooks generally sell for $300 to $400, but prices are dropping as new offerings flood the market and wireless carriers offer subsidies with the purchase of a data plan.

Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu noted that while the prices on nearly all PC components have been falling, "the one thing that has not been coming down is the cost of the operating system. This is going to put some pressure on Microsoft."

Microsoft doesn't say how much it charges PC brands for Windows, but analysts estimate it gets $20 to $40 for the older XP system used in the vast majority of netbooks, and at least $150 for the current Vista system.

Wu said price competition could ultimately give a bump to PC makers' margins.

"I think overall it should improve the profitability for PC vendors. It's really a question of how much they pass on to the customers," he said.

REWRITING THE RULES

Between 20 million and 30 million netbooks are expected to be shipped this year, and the devices continue to rewrite the rules for the PC industry.

Even as heavyweights such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc roll out new netbooks, analysts expect new players, including Taiwan-based equipment manufacturers and carriers such as AT&T Inc, to release branded netbooks running on either Intel Corp's x86 chip platform or ARM chips.

Google said Chrome will work on either architecture.

Agencies