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Steve Jobs is Financial Times’ Person of the Year

Guest post by: Dennis Schooley

Article Overview: Britain’s Financial Times has named Steve Jobs, the brains behind the most influential company in the consumer technology world, Apple, as Person of the Year.

Steve Jobs is Financial Times’ Person of the Year

Britain's Financial Times has named Steve Jobs, the brains behind the most influential company in the consumer technology world, Apple, as Person of the Year.

The distinction of being chosen as the most fascinating figure for 2010 by a key influence driver in the business world caps Apple's phenomenal year which peaked during the launch of the iPad and the iPhone 4.

Jobs, according to the Financial Times, has managed to push Apple back to top form after a period when he and the company he co-founded were considered as finished. UK's top daily newspaper also notes that Apple continues to create jobs even when most companies in the U.S. are firing employees to cut costs.

The $287.5-billion Cupertino, California-based company with a knack for spawning breakthrough products such as the iPod and ITunes, and Mac laptop has a worldwide annual sales of $65.23 billion. Apple is number 2 on Bloomberg Businessweek's 26 Tech Hot Growth Companies for 2010, eclipsed only by China's Tencent Holdings.

The 55-year-old Jobs, known to the electronics world as the insanely creative, black turtleneck-clad genius, set the stage for Apple's excitement-packed year with the introduction of the iPad tablet in April. The revolutionary slate-style gadget which ushered in the era of tablet computing surpassed the 1 million sales mark only 28 days after it was launch.

Goldman Sachs expects some 37.2 million iPads to be shipped by next year, making Apple among the biggest vendors in the personal computing market.

And then there was the slate smartphone, the iPhone 4. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg hailed the iPhone 4 as "the best device in its class," while Engadget described it as "the best smartphone on the market right now."

In a news conference, President Obama praised Jobs for his innovation. "We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products. We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that incentive. That's part of the free market," Obama said.

Earlier, Time Magazine named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year. Time said the 26-year-old Harvard dropout with a net worth of US$6.9 billion was given the award "for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives."

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Article Tags: Apple, person of the year, Steve Jobs, technology



Related Forum Posts
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn't Returned To Apple In 1997? - Thanks for sharing with us Yinko. Steve Jobs is definitely a visionary. Not only his products are innovative in a technological sense, but he's managed to turn a tech-company's products into a lifestyle.... a lifestyle!! [quote:zfqoq43n]Fast Forward to today. Apple has the sexiest products in the business: iMacs, Macbooks, iPhones, iPods and more.[/quote:zfqoq43n] I think not only tech would be different (music players and phones), but ways we can think of marketing and branding. What Steve Jobs did was of course no easy task for the smaller businesses, but he did start somewhere. What I did not know was that Apple is worth about as much as Google. How do you think Apple accomplish what they did? In terms of strategy wise? If you could advice Steve on one thing, what would it be?
Re: Citizen Journalism: There's no such thing - This clearly shows that if Steve Jobs sneezes the price of the stock will drop. Since Apple is a great company why do they have to link the rise and fall of the stock to one man? So eventually when Steve passes on what is going to happen to Apples stock?
Re: Are you getting an iPad 2? - @GT - we can talk more about it once I get one and I'm happy to answer any questions to see if it might fit your lifestyle. @Yinka - Sorry, no payment from Steve Jobs... I wish!
Re: What are the top videos for entrepreneurs on YouTube? - I've seen the Steve Jobs video a few times and it is a great one. Off to watch David's suggestion right now. Thanks guys! I'll try to find one of my own to add to the list.
How to valuate a business - Hi Garth - here is how we did it at Northern Crown Capital when I was helping them raise venture capital for Toronto-based entrepreneurs. Assume the start date is 2003 so 2008 projections are 5 years out: How Northern Crown Capital Valuates a Business 2008 Financial Projections Earnings Before Tax $5,865,000 Tax Rate 42% Taxes $2,463,300 Net Earnings $3,401,700 Amount Seeking to Raise Today $3,500,000 Discounted Value of Future Opportunity, 5 Years Out 2008 P/E Ratio 15 Value of Company in 2008 $51,025,500 Discount Rate Applied 30% Year 2008 $51,025,500 Year 2007 $35,717,850 Year 2006 $25,002,495 Year 2005 $17,501,747 Year 2004 $12,251,223 Value of Company at Investment in 2003 $12,251,223 Less: Investment Amount $3,500,000 Present Value $8,751,223 Discount for Risk & Private Company 40% Less: Discount for Risk & Private Company $3,500,489 Private Company Value $5,250,734 Present Value (What the Owner Keeps) $5,250,734 60.00% Financing (What the Investor Gets) $3,500,000 40.00% Total $8,750,734 100.00% I hope this helps!


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