Running Apple’s board of directors without Steve Jobs around has been “weird” for its chairman, Arthur Levinson, according to an interview he gave at the Stanford Graduate School of Business Tuesday reported by CNN. Levinson stated that the Jobs the public knew was “not, for the most part, the Steve Jobs that I knew,” and that he feels Apple’s short-term earnings are not cause for concern.
Levinson called Jobs a “one of a kind guy.” Of attending board of director meetings since Jobs passed away in October 2011, Levinson said, “ I’m still not to the point where I walk into that board room and don’t miss Steve.” Levinson was a member of the board when Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO and recommended Tim Cook as his successor, per a plan that the board had previously established.
Levinson further stated that he didn’t feel Apple’s recent quarter was an appropriate indicator regarding the company’s long-term performance. He stated that there are “long-term signs of how a company is doing… whether or not Apple sells 47 or 48 million iPhones—let somebody else worry about that.”
Apple pulled out of a dip in iPhone sales from the second to fourth quarter in 2012 (with 26.9 million iPhones sold in Q4 2012) to 47.8 million in Q1 2013. Still, the company’s profit was flat year-over-year, despite revenue growth of 17.7 percent. Despite the fact that Levinson feels the sales are not long-term success indicators, the company’s stock dropped 10 percent after the Q1 2013 earnings announcements.
reader comments
29