Businessweek Profiles Phil Schiller

Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano:

Since Jobs’s death in October, perhaps no Apple executive other than CEO Tim Cook is under more pressure to fill the void. Apple declined to make Schiller available for this story, which is based on interviews with more than a dozen former Apple managers, business partners, and industry analysts, most of whom asked to remain anonymous to avoid harming their relationships with the company. Besides helping software chief Scott Forstall and hardware designer Jonathan Ive define new products, Schiller is the steward of Apple’s relationship with app developers. He has taken over all of Apple’s marketing, including a global advertising budget that hit $933 million last year. And he will increasingly be Apple’s public face, a role that should be evident at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference starting on June 11.

Good piece. It would be very hard to overstate Schiller’s role at Apple. “Marketing” at Apple doesn’t mean what “marketing” means at most companies. If you took the “Marketing” out of Schiller’s title and changed it to “Senior Vice President of Product”, people would have a better sense of his role.

★ Friday, 8 June 2012