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Silly Sunday Survey: Who would replace Steve Jobs?

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?