Steve Jobs Named MarketWatch's CEO of the Decade

MarketWatch selected Jobs for the award over fellow finalists Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Eric Schmidt of Google, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Tim Solso of engine manufacturer Cummins.

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He had almost got no competition there except from Schmidt may be. (But as all of Macrumors knows, that guy only exists to steal your cookies, so..)

Glad the company is doing better than in the 90s. I look forward to their future products.

I know, cue the haters who want to talk about how evil Jobs is. But I think this is an accurate assessment. Look at the impact Apple has had this decade:

* They own the portable music player market, and they got there from a standing start.

* Smart phones now, by default, look like iPhones. Why? Because iPhones are the gold standard.

* The tablet market is suddenly thriving after a decade of stagnation.

* Third parties are making lots of money by manufacturing and selling software for the App Store or add-ons for the gadgets.

* The Mac market is growing steadily after last decade's decline.

So one company is setting the tone for phones, music players and tablets. Not bad for a company thought to be almost dead a decade ago. A good CEO indeed.

Well deserved.

Love him or hate him... SJ and the team at Apple has managed to do some amazing things in the past 10 years and I'm sure in the years to come.

Deserved.

Certainly well deserved that he received this honor. No other CEO or company for for that matter is as iconic and has made electronics fun again.

NebulaClash said:

I know, cue the haters who want to talk about how evil Jobs is.

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That's what Enderle was there for?

I'm indifferent about the man personally, but I do think he deserves it.

He may end up being the CEO of the century at the rate he's going.

parapup said:

He had almost got no competition there except from Schmidt may be. (But as all of Macrumors knows, that guy only exists to steal your cookies, so..)

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Well, that result is kinda obvious, no? SJ is by far the world's best CEO in the history of corporate activities, except perhaps for the great Henry Ford.

APPLE IS ALIVE!

However brilliant a visionary he may be, Steve couldn't have done all this by himself. I shudder to think what Apple's products would look like if Jonathan Ive ever left Apple, for example.

Still, I like the way the guy thinks. He's leagues beyond some other tech CEOs (*cough*ballmer*cough*).

dXTC said:

Still, I like the way the guy thinks. He's leagues beyond other CEOs (*cough*ballmer*cough*).

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I think we could get Steve to gain 200lbs and dance around like an idiot with some creative movie editing!

CEO of the decade, for sure. But the Edison/Bell comparisons are unwarranted. Both of these gents instigated infrastructure transformations that formed much of the basis of the world's economic growth over the 20th Century. I don't think the App Store is in the same league as far as infrastructure is concerned. The other Apple innovations this decade have validated emerging market segments, which is important; but I don't see these consumer product classifications generating major ripples through history the way "electrification" or "telephony" did.

t0mat0 said:

That's what Enderle was there for?

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No doubt. Always amazes me that reporters still go to Enderle for anything. To me that's the sign of lazy journalism. If you quote Enderle, you obviously don't care. The guy is the laughingstock of the industry (or rather, one of several).

Gasu E. said:

CEO of the decade, for sure. But the Edison/Bell comparisons are unwarranted. Both of these gents instigated infrastructure transformations that formed much of the basis of the world's economic growth over the 20th Century. I don't think the App Store is in the same league as far as infrastructure is concerned. The other Apple innovations this decade have validated emerging market segments, which is important; but I don't see these consumer product classifications generating major ripples through history the way "electrification" or "telephony" did.

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True that, but the bigger picture of what Steve has helped usher in is in the way that just about every personal computer in use today (Windows boxes, Linux boxes running one of the distro front ends), and of course Macs share several UI design features in common. The ones that derived from the work Steve pushed in the Mac.

Yes, Xerox invented it, but it was Steve who pushed it into the mainstream, and we all compute differently today as a result. That's a societal change. Not as important as the telephone or electricity, but not bad either.

And now with the iPad and touch UIs, his team is setting the standard that others are copying for tablet computing.

So in personal computing, phone UIs, and now tablet UIs, Apple has popularized a look-and-feel that sets the tone for the world.

Gasu E. said:

CEO of the decade, for sure. But the Edison/Bell comparisons are unwarranted. Both of these gents instigated infrastructure transformations that formed much of the basis of the world's economic growth over the 20th Century. I don't think the App Store is in the same league as far as infrastructure is concerned. The other Apple innovations this decade have validated emerging market segments, which is important; but I don't see these consumer product classifications generating major ripples through history the way "electrification" or "telephony" did.

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Spot on. Most of what Steve does benefits Apple and may be a little bit by the indirect benefits the industry gets from things like creating Tablet market for example.

I would go as far as to say that Steve for all his greatness, is far more short sighted when it comes to societal changes, creating a diverse hardware/software ecosystem of the scale of what BillG did with Windows, making the world a better place by donating the wealth for worthwhile causes[*] (BillG), investing in infrastructure ( Google ) etc.


[*] Admittedly and hopefully that will happen if/when Steve retires OR may be he does it privately already but even with the scale of it, people just don't know about it.

What will become of Apple when ol' Stevy kicks the bucket.

My mom, now retired, worked for many years as an assistant to a Merrill Lynch broker. Back in 1998 that broker was talking to my brother about technology companies (since we both work in the industry). Apple was trading for $12 per share at the time and the broker referred to Apple as a terrible stock.

My brother replied that he felt the stock was undervalued. He said that with Steve Jobs back at Apple and with the acquisition of NeXT Step operating system that Apple would be able to do great things and would turn things around. That NeXT operating system became OSX and eventually a trimmed down version (iPhone OS) powered the first iPhone and now its latest incarnation as iOS powers the iPhone, iPod Touch, and most notably the iPad.

Years later (still years before the iPad release) that same broker asked my brother "how did you know?" To this day he says "I thought they would become viable and rebound, had I known they would revolutionize the mobile industry I would have bought Apple stock back in 1998 instead of buying a house."

What he has done to bring apple back from the dead is outstanding. Rightly deserved.

"Cumulatively, Apple has racked up more than $229 billion in total sales during the decade."

That number is mind-blowing

Congrats to Jobs though, he deserves all the praise he gets.

Gotta love Mr. Jobs. He's truly a visionary. I still laugh at the people who think that Microsoft "saved" apple by investing in the company... Microsoft wouldn't have dumped $500 million into a company that they didn't see promise in. I think they knew about the Macintosh release...insider trading anyone?

Little premature to be awarding a "CEO of the Decade" isn't it?

Gasu E. said:

CEO of the decade, for sure. But the Edison/Bell comparisons are unwarranted. Both of these gents instigated infrastructure transformations that formed much of the basis of the world's economic growth over the 20th Century. I don't think the App Store is in the same league as far as infrastructure is concerned. The other Apple innovations this decade have validated emerging market segments, which is important; but I don't see these consumer product classifications generating major ripples through history the way "electrification" or "telephony" did.

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This company re-invented the way we look at portable computing. A decade ago, nobody would've thought that we can now browse the internet, compose e-mails, play games, and chat on a portable tablet that can fit into our pockets. This company is building a new infrastructure on top of Edison's/Bell's infrastructure. This company is revolutionary because it has created an ecosystem (consisting of MULTIPLE emerging markets) in which consumers, developers, 3rd party businesses can thrive. We're seeing the emergence of new ways of doing business, new ways of content distribution, new ways of social interaction all because of the infrastructure that this company has created. The landscape is constantly shifting, but it will probably be based upon what Apple has done in some shape or form. Although SJ and Apple will eventually decline and be replaced by other CEOs/Companies in the future, we will all remember who started it all.

michaelflynn said:

Little premature to be awarding a "CEO of the Decade" isn't it?

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Why? The decade is now over. Isn't that the time to do such things?