Art Levinson was today promoted as the Chairman of the Board, by Apple. Levinson will be filling in Steve Jobs shoes, who held the position briefly before he passed away last month.
Art Levinson has been on the board of Apple since 2000 and has been a co-lead Director at the Apple board since 2005. Art Levinson had also worked closely with Jobs on the iPhone. In fact he was the one who tried to convince Steve Jobs on the apps ecosystem on which Jobs was very skeptical and had doubts about his team at Apple being able to pull off something like this.
Levinson also serves as a Chairman with Genentech, Inc. a biotech firm he had lead as the CEO from 1999 to 2005. He is also a board member at the pharmaceutical firm Roche.
Bob Iger currently CEO at Disney will be filling in as the board member at Apple after Levinson’s promotion.
Bob is also someone who had worked closely with Steve Jobs to rebuild the relations between Pixar and Disney which were strained during Michael Isner’s stint as CEO at Disney. He also presided over the acquisition of Pixar by Disney along with Steve Jobs.
Besides, Bob Iger was the one responsible for bringing Disney’s content to iTunes in a time when other media companies shied away from the prospect. Bob has a similar strategy for Disney as Steve had for Apple i.e. generating the best content, fostering innovation and making use of the latest technology.
Bob Iger seems to be an ideal replacement for Levinson in the board, one which would definitely help Apple prosper in the future.