It’s something of a running joke in the tech press how often highly paid and influential analysts update their predictions for iPad sales. TechCrunch’s article by Erick Schonfeld from a couple of days back neatly sums things up:

The iPad sold three times as much as the average tech blogger predictions, and five times as much as the average Wall Street analyst prediction. Think about that the next time you see a prediction for anything in tech. The newer it is, the less anybody knows.

To be fair, Brian Marshall did OK guessing at seven million, but just 1.1 million, Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel and Yair Reiner of Oppenheimer? Really? Even if the iPad hadn’t become a breakout hit and shaken up the industry, it would have sold more than that number to Apple fans alone.

Interesting times in mobile gaming. Although plenty of people continue to dismiss iOS and similar devices going forward, the industry is gradually shifting. The big news today is on MVC, where Capcom Interactive’s president and COO Midori Yuasa had this to say:

The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now plays on their smartphone.

The iPhone and larger smartphone markets are extremely important to Capcom as, like no device before, smartphones have the potential to become a universal game platform.

This is the fight Nintendo’s now in with the 3DS, and it’s very different to battling just another gaming console.

In Why Apple Will Be OK Without Steve Jobs, Leander Kahney bucks the trend and suggests the Cupertino giant will be fine, even if Jobs never returns to the company. He notes that Jobs is hardly alone in dreaming up and refining products (they’re not suddenly ‘discovered’—they come through a process of robust iteration and prototyping), that Tim Cook’s been a fine ‘acting CEO’ before, and that Jobs has turned his personality into Apple’s business processes.

He gets one thing wrong though, stating the following in his conclusion:

Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same. It won’t shine quite as brightly. It’ll be like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger.

Apple won’t shine as bright without Jobs, but it won’t be like the Stones minus Jagger, which would be nothing. The only musical analogy I could think of is unfortunate, in that it involves a death (which I surely hope doesn’t happen to Jobs), and it’s Joy Division.

When Ian Curtis left this world, the band suddenly found itself without its charismatic, amazing front-man. No-one really knew the other guys, and everyone in the press predicted disaster. One of the band (Bernard Sumner) got the ‘job’ of taking over, a new recruit (keyboardist Gillian Gilbert) came in to bolster the team, and they set to work. The first album was shaky (although I like it) but within a couple of years they’d put out Blue Monday, the biggest-selling 12″ of them all, and this was followed by critically acclaimed album after critically album.

There’s no reason to think that an Apple without Jobs couldn’t find itself in a similar place, especially if the company finds its own Blue Monday without him.

Steve Jobs is taking medical leave. There are now about a billion articles online, including a gem from SFGate, where Henry Blodget claims this wording that Jobs used is “not encouraging”:

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.

Blodget argues:

those are not the words of someone taking a short leave who is confident he will be back at the company soon (or ever).

FAN THOSE FLAMES, BLODGET! FIRE THAT LINK-BAIT SKY-HIGH AND FAR AND WIDE! I DON’T THINK THEY HEARD YOU ON THE MOON!

Oops. I appear to have left out a link. TSK! STUPID ME!

Apple’s media advisory just went out, with Steve Jobs telling Apple staff that he’s taking another “medical leave of absence” so he can focus on his health. Today, there’s no US stockmarket trading. Tomorrow, AAPL will fall off a cliff and people go OH MY GOD NO STEVE JOBS APPLE IS DOOMED, ignoring the facts that:

• Apple didn’t keel over last time Jobs took months off to deal with health problems;
• Apple has very capable people to take over the general running of the company (and, arguably, to offer both innovation and vision);
• Apple essentially is Steve Jobs now.

That last point bears explanation. I’m not saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that if he is out of the picture, Apple ceases to function. I’m saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that his way of thinking is now so deeply infused into the company that the company can continue to ‘be Steve’ even when he’s not there.

Hopefully, Jobs is merely taking a leave of absence to concentrate on getting fitter (day-to-day running of Apple is probably quite stressful and not ideal for long-term recuperation from a major operation) and there’s no recurrence of the cancer he had. Hopefully, he can and will get well soon. Hopefully, the tech press and traders won’t go batshit monkey ballistic over this news, spewing disinformation and bullshit everywhere. Sadly, I think the last of those is a very long shot indeed.

UPDATE: BBC News reports:

Apple shares traded in Frankfurt are down 7% on the news.

Don’t expect Apple to catch up with Exxon in 2011, then.