Tim Cook Wraps Up His First Year As Apple CEO

It hardly seems like it has been a year since Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple. In fact, it has very close to a year since Steve Jobs passed away. That sad anniversary will happen on October 5. Cook has now been on the job for a year, and it's hard to say he has done anything other than a fantastic job over at Apple. I think many people expected to see Apple on the decline after the death of Steve Jobs.

Apple has certainly thrived, and under Cook's leadership with the company becoming the most viable firm on the planet with a $621 billion market cap only a few days before Cook's one-year anniversary. Cook did inherit much of Apple's success from Steve Jobs with huge demand in massive success with the iPhone and the iPad.

However, Mercury News reports that Cook has used his supply chain expertise, which is what landed him a job at Apple 14 years ago, to help Apple build and ship more and more gadgets all around the world. Interestingly, Mercury News believes that it could be five years or so before we get a clear picture of whether or not Apple can continue to be innovative with Cook at the helm. The launch of the iPhone 5 under Cook's watch will be the first major product launch in the post Jobs Apple landscape.

I guess we can assume even with Steve Jobs gone almost a year, work on the next-generation iPhone, expected to launch in a few weeks, had begun before Jobs passed away. That could make the iPhone 5 one of the last products to bear Jobs' fingerprints.

[via Mercury News]