SANTA CLARA - Oracle's Larry Ellison says Apple Computer's board has found a favorite candidate for the seat left empty by the ejection of former chief executive Gil Amelio. Ellison the Tantalizer won't say more than that, though.
"We've got someone we like very much, although I can't tell you who it is," Ellison, an Apple board member, said Thursday, while answering questions at the annual dinner of the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley public forum. No one asked how the company managed to track down someone willing to answer to both Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Ellison, two of the most opinionated and demanding execs in the tech world.
Ellison said what Jobs has apparently been saying for a while: that he doesn't want to stay on as Apple CEO. "I don't think he is (staying on)," said Ellison. "I'm almost positive he's not. I think he'll serve as acting CEO until we find the right person. I think he wants to focus on Pixar and his kids."
Jobs is CEO of Pixar, the film-animation company that has struck up film deals with Walt Disney, and a Pixar executive said late last month that Jobs had decided he would not stay on at the head of Apple longer-term.
Ellison's comments were the first board-level confirmation of comments by industry sources last week that Jobs had identified a favored candidate and was seeking to work out a deal.
Some corporate headhunters, including Bill Swartz, president of an executive search firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, have said it would be difficult to recruit a top- notch candidate as long as Jobs retained a role at Apple.
Ellison did not say how quickly a chief executive would be named, but he defended the role of Jobs, who Ellison noted was his best friend, and said he saw no reason why Apple could not be revived.
"We can restore the company," he said, noting that its market share had dwindled to as low as 3 percent. "Apple has a role to play and, if we get things in order, could be a leader in this new generation of low-cost network computers."
Ellison said Apple's strengths could be attributed to its brand, the Mac OS operating system, and Steve Jobs, "and not necessarily in that order."
Even if Apple does not use technologies from Jobs' NeXt Software, which it acquired for more than US$400 million in the past year, Ellison said it was "the best deal that (Apple) ever did," just for getting Jobs back.
