The health of Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs will overshadow quarterly results on Tuesday from the consumer electronics powerhouse, whose iPhone and iPad excited holiday shoppers. Apple shares, up 62 percent in the last 12 months, were down 3.4 percent in midday trade on Tuesday.
That is far less than the estimated 11 percent drop in Apple shares after Jobs announced his last medical leave. In European trading, its shares rose more than 4 percent, regaining some of the 6 percent lost after the announcement on Monday. Stock in rivals including Blackberry-maker Research in Motion and Motorola Mobility was up on Tuesday.
The world's largest technology company by market capitalisation said on Monday that Jobs, 55, was taking a medical leave of absence without specifying a return date or detailing his condition.
Jobs' latest medical leave "is clearly a negative, but that doesn't take away from an extraordinary company with a great team," said Shawn Kravetz, president of Boston-based hedge fund firm Esplanade Capital, which no longer holds a stake in Apple. "But even great teams can lose their captains."
Aside from Jobs' health, the company is entering 2011 on a roll, a cash-generating machine with surging sales across its product lines. Wall Street has forecast Apple's quarterly revenue to rise more than 50 percent to $24.4 billion after a bumper holiday shopping season. James Cordwell, an analyst at London-based Atlantic Equities, said investors were realising Apple was more than Jobs. "His absence is unlikely to affect the company's performance over the next two years or so, given the strong position they have in the market." Jobs' leave came nearly two years after he took a six-month break to undergo a liver transplant. He also took time off after pancreatic surgery in 2004.