Steven P Jobs’s insistent vision that he knew what consumers wanted has made Apple

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one of the wo­rld’s most valuable and influential companies. But his resignation as chief executive of Apple raises the question of whether the company he fo­unded will be able to maintain that status.

“I have always said that if th­ere ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” Jobs said in a letter released on Wednesday by the company. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”

Jobs, 56, has been on medical leave since January, his th­ird such abse- nce. He un­derwent surg­ery fo­­r pancreatic cancer in 2004 and received a liver transplant in 2009.

Jobs will become chairman, a position that did not exist before. Apple named Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, to succeed Jobs as CEO.

Rarely has a major company and industry been so dominated by a single individual and so successful. His influence has gone far beyond the iconic personal computers that were Apple’s principal product for its first 20 years. In the past decade, Apple has redefined the music business through the iPod, the cellphone business through the iPhone and the entertainment and media world through the iPad. Again and again, Jobs has gambled that he knew what the customer would want, and again and again he has been right.

“The big thing about Steve Jobs is not his genius or his charisma but his extraordinary risk-taking,” said Alan Deutsch­man, who wrote a biography of Jobs. “Apple has been so innovat­ive because Jobs takes major ri­sks, which is rare in corporate America. He doesn’t market-test anything. It’s all his own judgm­ent and perfectionism and gut.”

Cook, an expert in logistics, has been instrumental in locking up contracts in advance for critical parts in the company’s devices. That has had the effect of securing favourable prices, keeping Apple’s profit margins high. But it also has prevented rival companies from producing competing products at significantly lower prices.

While Cook is well respected in the industry, he is little known outside. Analysts and Silicon Valley experts said new Apple products were in the pipeline for the next few years, but the firm’s prospects for success beyond that were already being debated.

Tim Bajarin, president of the technology research firm Crea­tive Strategies, said the news about Jobs was “a shock because it’s abrupt.” But Bajarin said that “while there’s definitely concern for Steve as a person,” he had little concern for the company.

“Steve has built a very deep bench of managers, including the leadership of Tim Cook, who clearly understands Steve’s vision, goals and direction,” said Bajarin, who has followed Apple for 30 years.

“You could make the case that Steve has injected so much of his DNA into Apple that Apple will continue,” said Guy Kawasaki, who was an Apple executive in the late 1980s. “Or you can make the case that without Steve, Apple will flounder. But you cannot make the case that Apple without Steve Jobs will be better. Hard to conceive of that.”

The technology world has ne­ver been short of strong-willed leaders (think Bill Gates at Microsoft or Larry Ellison at Or­acle). But even in this select gr­oup, Jobs was noted for the control he exerted and the loyalty he commanded. Without him, his devoted team may soon fracture.

“I think the key question is whether the Apple team will continue to work as effectively as a collaborative without the single person to rely on for the final decision,” said Charles Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst.

Cook, 50, joined Apple in 1998. He was promoted to COO in 2007, overseeing day-to-day operations. Wall Street had long assumed the soft-spoken Cook, who was raised in Alabama and graduated from Auburn University, would be the successor to Jobs. While Jobs convalesced, Apple thrived with the continuing rise in iPh­one sales and huge growth in the iPad, the dominant tablet computer.

The company and Jobs had been criticised for disclosing little information about his health to investors. The news of Jobs’s resignation came after the market closed on Wednesday. In after-hours trading, the stock fell five per cent.

The early years of Apple long ago passed into legend: the two young hippie-ish founders, Jobs and Steve Wozniak; the introdu­ction of the first Macintosh computer in 1984, which stretched the boundaries of what those devices could do; Jobs’s abrupt exit the next year in a power struggle. But it was his return to Apple in 1996 that started a winning str­eak that raised the company fr­om the near dead to its current position.

More than 314 million iPods, 129 million iPhones and 29 million iPads have been sold, according to AM Sacconaghi Jr, an analyst with Bernstein Research. This summer, Apple briefly exceeded ExxonMobil as the most valuable US company.

Apple does not announce or even telegraph what is in its product pipeline. But there has been strong indication that it is very close to unveiling a new iP­hone, which would probably in­clude a more powerful processor to handle the expanding demands of multimedia.

The new iPhone is also likely to be thinner and lighter, as every new version has been since the original’s release in 2007. A higher-resolution rear camera has also been expected, as well as more powerful voice recognition features rooted in Apple’s purchase in April 2010 of Siri, a small voice recognition company.

Twitter, the instant messaging service, filled with an outpouring of grief and gratitude on We­dnesday night. The few ill-spirited comments or wisecracks were met with immediate reto­rts. “St­eve Jobs is the greatest le­ader our industry has ever kn­own,” wrote Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com. “It’s the end of an era.”

“Funny how mu­ch emotion you can feel about a stranger,” wrote Susan Orlean, the author. “And yet every phone call I make, every time I’m on a computer, he’s part of it.”

“Very sad news about Steve Jobs at $AAPL,” wrote Jim Cramer, the CNBC host. “He is America’s greatest industrialist. Perhaps the greatest ever.”

Andy Baio, a technology entrepreneur in Portland, Oregon, may have put it most directly and effectively: “We’ll miss you, Steve.”