Silly Sunday Survey: Who would replace Steve Jobs?

By Laurie A. Duncan

Douglas McIntyre over at Blogging Stocks posed an interesting question the other day, in light of the current issues surrounding Apple's option back-dating. If it were discovered that Steve Jobs played a key role in the option mishap and he was forced to resign as CEO, who would/should be his replacement?

Here are the candidates McIntyre suggests as possibilities:

  • Phil Schiller — He is the long-time head of global product marketing. He has been with the company since 1997 and has been critical in most product launches. (Update: Bob points out in the comments below that Phil started at Apple in 1987, then left for a few years during Spindler and Amelio's tenure, then returned in 1997)
  • Tim Cook — The company's COO. He had a long career at IBM. He also heads the Mac division.
  • Tony Fadell – One of the fathers of the iPod; he has an engineering background. He is a former executive at Philips Electronics.
  • William Campbell — One of Apple's leading directors. He has run a large public software company, Intuit.
  • Jerome York — Although he is over 70, York has experience operating troubled companies. He was CFO of IBM and a member of that company's board. He is also on the GM board. (Update: Alex alerts us in the comments that as of last week York is no longer on the GM Board)
  • Jim Allchin — Head of platforms and services at Microsoft. He intends to retire with the the launch of Vista. Allchin has an engineering background.
  • Sue Decker — The highly regarded CFO of Yahoo! She has a Wall St. background and now runs several key divisions at Yahoo!
  • John Thompson — The highly-regarded CEO of Symantec, has a background in running a large software company and is well liked on Wall Street.

Perhaps some of you would like to weigh in?

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