NEW YORK — Apple founder Steve Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer whose gaunt appearance in the past year has alarmed the Mac and iPod lovers who look to him as an oracle, said Monday he has an easily treated hormone imbalance and will remain in charge of the company.
The news sent Apple stock up more than 4 percent on a down day for much of the market. But Jobs did not say whether the problem was related to the cancer, and some analysts said the health watch may not be over.
The chief executive’s health is an important issue for any company, but especially for Apple, where Jobs has presided over a decade of huge success. His mix of secrecy and high-design principles, seen in the rollouts of new Mac computers, the iPod music player and the iPhone, has become a trademark.
In a public letter, Jobs, 53, said his thinness had been a mystery even to him and his doctors until a few weeks ago, when “sophisticated blood tests” confirmed that he has “a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”
Jobs, who co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976 at the dawn of the personal- computer revolution, left in 1985 and returned as CEO in 1997, slashing unprofitable product lines and helping to rescue the company from financial ruin.
Jobs announced in 2004 he had undergone successful surgery to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer — an islet-cell neuroendocrine tumor. The cancer is easily cured if diagnosed early.
Still, the announcement is unlikely to end speculation about Jobs, said Brian Marshall, an AmTech Research analyst.
He expects Jobs to step down as CEO this year, most likely remaining an adviser to the company. Marshall said he believes Jobs’ departure would cut $10 to $15 from Apple’s stock price.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment, and Jobs said in his letter that “I will be the first one to step up and tell our board of directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO.”
Stephen M. Davis, a senior fellow at the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale University, said the announcement fits Apple’s pattern of “releasing information to shareholders in dribs and drabs.”
“It’s not a technique designed to win loyalty from investors over the long term,” he added. The Associated Press
