Apple CEO Steve Jobs “is going Hollywood, as the single biggest shareholder of the most iconic of Hollywood studios: Disney,” Jack Gruber reports for USA Today. “Disney said Tuesday it is buying Pixar — the animation studio Jobs runs — for $7.5 billion and giving Pixar CEO Jobs a seat on the board of directors… Questions about Jobs’ involvement in Disney are numerous. Even with just a 4% market share for computers, Apple is one of the great comeback stories — with its packed retail stores in major cities, red-hot iPod media device, and a $64.3 billion market cap that’s a good deal larger than Disney’s $50 billion.”
“Tech analysts say it is unlikely Jobs will abandon the company he co-founded in 1976, put on his sunglasses and start spending most of his time at Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif. More likely, he will continue to spend most of his working energy on Apple, devoting one day a week to his other love, Pixar,” Gruber reports. “Charles Wolf, a longtime Apple analyst who covers the company for equity firm Needham & Co., says Jobs is emotionally attached to Apple. ‘It’s his heart and soul, it’s kicking ass all over the world and becoming a huge brand. He would be really reluctant to leave it now.'”
“After being ousted by Apple’s board of directors in 1985 after an internal power struggle, Jobs started the computer company NeXT and bought Pixar from Star Wars director George Lucas for $10 million in 1986. He returned to Apple in 1997, first as interim CEO, when it bought NeXT,” Gruber reports. “Richard Doherty, an independent analyst for the Envisioneering Group, says Jobs’ biggest accomplishment upon returning to Apple was bringing his ‘zeal’ back to the company, and asking the right questions. ‘At the board meetings, Steve asks questions nobody would dare bring up, and you better have an answer,’ says Doherty. ‘At Apple, he asked these amazing questions, and the company started to transform.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “sailfish” for the heads up.]
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