With the exception of Tim Cook, Jony Ive is almost certainly the most famous person associated with the modern era of Apple.
As the iconic Brit designer known to millions for waxing lyrical in front of a white backdrop on Apple keynotes (and, you know, designing a whole bunch of insanely great products), he’s an Apple icon.
So what kind of impact did his newly announced departure have on Apple’s stock price? Maybe not as much as you might think.
News of Ive’s departure to form his own company caused Apple stock to tumble 1.5%. That’s equivalent to $13 billion. However, by the time Apple stock closed, it was trading at $199.74. That’s only a few cents below the $199.80 it closed at on Wednesday.
That might seem remarkable for a company often billed as the most design-savvy tech company, which just lost its most famous designer. But really it says a lot about Apple’s overall stability as a company.
Apple’s in a great position
We no longer live in a world in which Apple stock was valued on the promise of just one or two superstar players — whether that’s products or people. Apple losing Jony Ive in the early 2000s would have been a massive blow. But just as AAPL is no longer totally reliant on the iPhone for its price tag, nor is the company reliant on any one person.
Anyone expecting Apple stock to plummet after Ive’s departure probably hasn’t been paying attention. The stock didn’t crash after the death of Steve Jobs, and actually wound up soaring the year after. That’s not to diminish the contribution of either man to Apple. It just shows that, as far as investors go, Apple’s success rests on more than just the shoulders of one or two people. There are a whole lot of reasons to be confident about its future.
And that’s a legacy that Jony Ive helped carve out.
