CEO

We’re all discussing this here and wondered what the wider Apple community thinks.
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Former Apple Retail Chief Ron Johnson is out at JCPenney after his radical retail redesign failed to ignite sales in the same manner in which Apple Stores had grown accustomed. Ron Johnson left Apple in 2011 for the JCP job after a decade at Apple.  He helped design the original Apple Store concept after being lured away from Target by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He pioneered concepts like the Genius Bar which was unheard of at the time but still a growing trend in the industry.

We know more than a few folks who would like to see him back at Apple which meanwhile has found him difficult to replace. One such attempt was the hiring and subsequent firing of John Browett, a former Dixon’s UK CEO.

Johnson continued to live in the Bay area during his stint at JCP commuting to Plano Texas via Jet so…

BREAKING: Ron Johnson out as J.C. Penney CEO – source • $JCP QUOTE: http://t.co/aP20vqeZqF

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 8, 2013

JC Penny CEO inventory apparently out of stock.

— M.G. Siegler (@mgsiegler) April 8, 2013

I'd rather see a guy fail like Ron Johnson did any day compared with all the corporate drones who just play it safe all day long.

— Adam Lashinsky (@adamlashinsky) April 8, 2013

J. C. Penney appoints Myron E. (Mike) Ullman, III as CEO succeeding Ron Johnson #breaking

— Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) April 8, 2013

We’ve reached out to JCP and Apple for comment and will update as appropriate. Press release follows:

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As the new Passbook feature available on iOS 6 starts to settle in the hands of more users, the sales of printed tickets may start to go down. MarketWatch reported this afternoon that Major League Baseball wants to phase out printed tickets all together and move to apps like Passbook to deliver tickets instead. The MLB tested this type of digital ticket sale with four teams during the last two weeks of the season. From the sound of it, results are better than expected.

Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB Advance Media, told MarketWatch that 1,500 e-ticket buyers, or 12 percent, bought their tickets using Passbook. He was shocked: “That adoption rate really floored us – there is no question our fans want digital tickets.” This has to be just what Apple wants.

Passbook offers benefits that paper tickets do not. Sure, there is nothing like having the paper ticket as a collectors item, but the benefits of a digital version may seem worth it to some. Bowman explained, “Fans can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity – and they never get lost or left at home.” Fans can also purchase a paper ticket, leave it at home, and use their ticket via Passbook instead.
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According to a report from Foss Patents (and confirmed by Reuters), Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Samsung Chief Executive Officer Gee-Sung Choi will meet within the next 90 days for settlement talks over ongoing patent disputes. Judge Lucy Koh, who is presiding over the two cases in California, initiated the meeting after ordering the companies to submit their CEOs and legal counsels to an Alternative Dispute Resolution.

“As directed by the Court, Apple and Samsung are both willing to participate in a Magistrate Judge Settlement Conference with Judge Spero as mediator. At Apple, the chief executive officer and general counsel are the appropriate decision-makers, and they will represent Apple during the upcoming settlement discussions. At Samsung, the chief executive officer and general counsel are also the appropriate decision-makers, and they will represent Samsung during these settlement discussions.”

The report called the talks “semi-voluntary,” because the companies did not have to submit to the Alternative Dispute Resolution. However, as pointed out by Foss Patents, “if only one of them had made the CEO available, the other one would have appeared to be less than constructive.” Apple and Samsung executives will meet in San Francisco with U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero sometime over the next three months:

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AllThingsD just announced Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook would appear as the opening-night speaker at this year’s D10 conference. The 10th D: All Things Digital conference will be Cook’s first time speaking at the event, and AllThingsD noted this is his first-ever appearance onstage at a non-Apple event since becoming CEO last year. Past D conferences were notably a stage for many in-depth discussions and interviews with Steve Jobs. Jobs last appeared at the event at D8 in 2010.

Walt Mossberg and I could not be more thrilled to announce that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, will be the opening-night speaker at our 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

The D10 conference is slated for May 29 to May 31, 2012 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

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Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook was the highest-paid CEO in the United States during 2011, according to a report from The New York Times (via Bloomberg). The report cited data from research firm Equilar who tracked executive compensation throughout the year.

To take home the top spot, Cook received about $378 million. That number includes his salary, perks, and bonuses of $1.8 million in addition to a one-time stock grant of $376.2 million that vests in 2016 and 2021. The report noted that stat works out to roughly a million dollars a day. However, many are taking issue with the number, because the majority of the money requires Cook to stay with the company for 10 years before receiving it…

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In a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Google’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Page talked at length about his new role as chief and his plans for the future of Android, Motorola, and the rest of the company. Much the interview revolved around Android and Google’s relationship with other companies, and Page was asked about his relationship with Steve Jobs toward the end. He was also asked about the state of Android tablets and his thoughts on Apple’s recently announced dividend.

When the interviewer mentioned Google and Jobs had their “differences” about Android, presumably referring to Jobs’ claims that Android is a “stolen product,” Page claimed Jobs’ anger toward Android/Google was “actually for show”:

I think the Android differences were actually for show. I had a relationship with Steve. I wouldn’t say I spent a lot of time with him over the years, but I saw him periodically. Curiously enough, actually, he requested that meeting. He sent me an e-mail and said: “Hey, you want to get together and chat?” I said, “Sure, I’ll come over.” And we had a very nice talk. We always did when we had a discussion generally… He was quite sick. I took it as an honor that he wanted to spend some time with me. I figured he wanted to spend time with his family at that point. He had a lot of interesting insights about how to run a company and that was pretty much what we discussed.

He continued when encouraged to elaborate on his “for show” comment:

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Reports from the Wall Street Journal last October revealed Sprint’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse convinced the company’s board to take on a staggering commitment of approximately $20 billion to purchase 30.5 million iPhones over four years. At the time, Hesse said Sprint “would likely lose money on the deal until 2014. ″ He also claimed not having the iPhone was “the No. 1 reason customers leave or switch.” In an interview with Mobile World Live (via BGR), Hesse defended the decision and claimed, among other things, that iPhone users are “more profitable than the average smartphone customer.”

“ Subsidies are heavy for the iPhone. This is the reason why a high percentage of new customers is important… But iPhone customers have a lower level of churn and they actually use less data on average than a high-end 4G Android device. So from a cost point of view and a customer lifetime value perspective. They’re more profitable than the average smartphone customer.”

Hesse went on to claim that Sprint was “pulling a lot of customers” from AT&T and Verizon during the fourth quarter by noting four out of every 10 iPhones the carrier sold were new customers. According to Hesse, that is around double the rate of the other carriers.

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Yesterday we brought you some of the highlights from Apple CEO Tim Cook’s presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, and now Apple made the conference’s audio available on its website. While Apple usually uses the conference to discuss numbers and trends, Cook gave us some hints at what’s next for Apple TV, and he also discussed worker safety following media attention over its supply chain abroad.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOlf1uGBoCQ&feature=youtu.be]

With all the analyst rumors and reports of Steve Jobs working on yet to be released Apple products in the months prior to his death, until today we didn’t have many first hand accounts to support the theories. After learning over a million people wrote in to Apple to express their condolences, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son recalls a first hand account with CEO Tim Cook at the recent iPhone 4S launch where Cook apparently received a call from Jobs (via PCMag):

“I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S. When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, ‘Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘My boss is calling me.’ That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died.”

What product could Jobs possibly have wanted to discuss? With the iPhone 4S being launched that day, it’s unlikely it was an iPhone 5. Perhaps an iPad 3? Could this also mean that Jobs was hopeful right until the end? One wouldn’t expect a man who knows he will pass the next day to continue working on a product. This could be a sign that Jobs passing was more of a surprise than much of the media will lead you to believe. However, it might also simply be a testament to just how passionate and dedicated Jobs was to changing the world through his work at Apple.

In his statement, Son continued:

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Steve Jobs was buried in the Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California Friday afternoon according to information discovered by Forbes. The memorial park where he was laid to rest includes many other technology greats like HP’s co-founder David Packard and engineer Lewis Terman who were partners with Walter Hewlett — who gave Jobs’ his first summer job at the age of 13.

The site might be a nice place to visit and pay your respects in the years ahead if you are into that sort of thing.

Apple plans on holding a company wide memorial event October 19th to celebrate Steve Jobs’ life, Tim Cook announced in a company wide email yesterday.

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