Steve Jobs, the co-founder of iconic company Apple, died on Wednesday, October 5, 2011, at the age of 56. Jobs has suffered from cancer for many years. He had a surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took several medical leaves before he resigned as CEO of Apple, in August this year.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being”, shows an Apple statement. See the entire statement here.

Born on February 24, 1955, Steve Jobs graduated from high school in 1972 and followed Reed college in Portland. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple.

Apple is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. Established on April 1, 1976 in California, and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was previously named Apple Computer, for its first 30 years, but removed the word "Computer" on January 9, 2007, to reflect the company's ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers.

Eight years after founding Apple, in 1984, Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh, the first personal computer using a mouse and having a modern graphical interface. In 1985 a power struggle between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier, and Steve Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT the same year. In 1996, Gil Amelio, new CEO of Apple, chose to purchase NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. In 1997 Jobs was named CEO as Apple. On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Store, tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy.

On October 23, 2011, Apple announced the iPod portable digital audio player, and started selling it on November 10, while in 2003 Apple's iTunes Store was introduced. On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence, for an indefinite period, to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Timothy D. Cook took up Jobs' day-to-day operations at Apple. In June, 2011, Apple unveiled the iCloud online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and software.

Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization in 2010 with an 84 percent increase to USD 153.3 billion, and became the most valuable consumer-facing brand worldwide. In the fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011, the company posted revenues of USD 28.57 billion and a net profit of USD 7.3 billion. The company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Apple)