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An era came to an end Wednesday as Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple, handing Tim Cook the reins of the company Jobs created and transformed into a leader of the tech industry. Jobs will remain on as chairman of Apple. In a brief letter of resignation, Jobs wrote that the day has come when he "could no longer meet my duties and expectations."
An arms race appears to have broken out over high-tech patent acquisitions with companies jockeying to pad their intellectual property stores or risk paying a price in legal fees or royalties. That’s why speculation abounds about how Apple may react to Google’s move to acquire Motorola Mobility and its 17,000 cellphone patents.
Just as Apple broke new ground by making a by-the-book deal with the music industry giants 10 years ago — when the industry was up against the file-sharing wall — Apple again is leading the way in creating a model for music in the cloud. Apple reportedly will pay between $100 and $150 million in advance payments to the four major music labels to get iCloud going.
My three months in Brazil last year reaffirmed something I already knew: Brazilians love American stuff. If you go to a sporting goods store, you will see Nike shoes selling for $140 that would sell for $50 in the United States. Go to a beach shop, and you will see U.S. surfboards selling for double. Shop for anything else with a U.S. company brand — most especially Apple products — and you will notice the same.
The Consumer Electronics Association has confirmed that an Apple-focused area will come to its huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2010, though it currently can’t confirm that Apple itself will set up an official exhibit. Apple created a furor in December when it announced that this year’s Macworld conference in San Francisco would be its last.