Wednesday January 14, 2009
Navivest

After dropping $2.38 in regular trading on Wednesday, Apple (AAPL) shares are down another $6.03, or 7.07% to $79.30, after details of a letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to company employees were released, in which Steve Jobs announced that he will be taking a medical leave until the end of June.

Just over a week ago on January 5th, he released a statement in which he said that his drastic weight loss was attributable to a hormonal imbalance that he was already undergoing treatment for.

The weight loss has been a concern to Apple investors who were worried that it was a sign of recurrence of the prostate cancer that Steve Jobs successfully underwent treatment for in the summer of 2004.

Tim Cook, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, will handle the task of running the company on a day-to-day basis during this period.

While the potential loss of a CEO at a company that’s firing on all cyliners is always of concern to investors, in Steve Jobs’ case, this is even more so as the success of Apple has been directly tied to him.

After being unceremoniusly kicked out of the company he cofounded, in 1985, Apple struggled for a while until he took over again in 1997. It was after that, that Apple introduced the very successful iMac, which breathed new life into the company and then of course the iPod, which along with the iTunes store, has completely revolutioned sales of recorded music in the U.S.

Tags: Apple  Steve Jobs