As co-founder, does Steve Jobs still own enough Apple shares to control Apple Inc.?
Everyone that owns a share of stock in a company is part owner. Some just own more than others. According to Apple's latest proxy statement he owns 5.5 million shares of the 914 million shares outstanding. So he owns approximately 0.6% of the company.  If he owned more than 50% of the company's outstanding stock he would effectively control the board of directors by being able to pick whoever he wanted.  Then he would control the company. Very few publicly traded companies are that way. Most have sold off parts of the company to the public in order to raise cash for the company and make their investment more liquid.
There is some truth to this. But the reverse could be seen as Apple. Where they did this, and it blew up until they gave it back to Jobs.  Similarly, Bezos seems to be doing a good job as CEO. Gates and Ellison also were pretty successful!  I agree though that when companies start to get major investors/go public, there should be some planning/thought to see if the Founder/CEO is actually a CEO type "I think you are confusing ""understands technology"" with ""is technology guru"" or ""technology visionary"".  &gt; As I noted the whole timeline simply DOESN'T match up with reality (at all, no matter HOW desperately one contorts the timeline into trying to make it ""plausible"").  Your timeline is flawed, as Sony's early work goes back well in to the 50's.  &gt; his son by having a patent attorney look at it, and then came back and told junior some cock &amp; bull story about having been ""beaten"" to the patent.  Maybe the whole thing is a lie. However, the story goes that the patent application was actually filed.  &gt; LOL. Go to any sizeable bar and talk to a number of people; ask them if they ever had an ""idea"" that was later patented and became a ""big time"" thing -- you'll end up with HUNDREDS of similar ""well I had this idea once for _____"" stories, and a lot of them will come from when they were teens or twenty-somethings... very few of them have even a tiny kernel of ""truth"".  Agreed. That's exactly why I'm saying having the idea isn't important. Like you said, he might have just been working off of some designs he read in a magazine. I don't look at his work with the CRT as a demonstration of any particular brilliance, just an interest and enough competence to actually get the damn thing to work, which already separates him from pretty much all non-tech CEO's, and even puts him in a reasonably rarefied cloud amongst CEO's or large tech companies.  &gt; As the Apple CEO, he was a ""fish out of water"" -- but, given that the advertising &amp; PR people had already (once) done the ""let's dress up our CEO as a 'technical wunderkind visionary"" (with Jobs) -- they simply did their best to repeat the same thing (with even less basis in reality) with Sculley.  You should read Jobs' own accounts of meeting and recruiting Sculley. They had very extensive conversations about technology and while Jobs no doubt didn't see him as a visionary, the computer industry was new to Sculley so he had a lot to learn (particularly the first year), and Sculley clearly didn't get Jobs' design esthetic, but Jobs very much felt he could share his vision and Sculley would understand it and its implications. Similar comments from Markkula and others who worked with the guy then.  &gt; And of course subsequently -- he's been coasting on (and trying to capitalize on) that bullshit ever since. &gt; &gt; He probably should have just gone back to the beverage &amp; advertising world; but by then I think he had begun to believe his own PR myth, and his ego just wouldn't allow for admitting the truth.  Ironically, I think the post-Apple track record shows quite the opposite. Sculley definitely sees himself not as a technical visionary or even a technologist, but as a master marketer. Yet the evidence is he hasn't done terribly well marketing most of the fairly interesting tech that he's found out there. So I'm not sure what your basis is for this narrative you've constructed." He is still a board member able to receive company perks and exert his influence and keep it in line with his vision although he will be more of a shadowy character and he is still a billionaire, worth 6.7Bn if my memory serves me right... Apple's specialty is UX.  It's an incredibly talented UX company, both software and hardware wise.  It's also talented at convincing it's fanbase that anything they release is required to live.  Apple fanboys would buy a car just to get the Apple logo somewhere on it. The shareholders elect the board of directors who in turn appoint a CEO. The CEO is responsible for the overall running of the company. To answer your specific questions: Yes, Steve Jobs could make decisions that are harmful to the well-being of the company.  However, it's the responsibility of the board of directors to keep his decisions and behavior in check. They will remove him from his position if they feel he could be a danger to the company. "So item 1  The two investors leading the suit say ""it's because we want lots of control"" and sue founder.  The standard share holders want equal voting - as would I.  Founder appoints two new board members to ensure this happens.  Item 2 the suit:  The suit is to remove the ability to appoint new board members from the founder correct?  After he has appointed two new ones to implement the changes the other shareholders want correct?  But somehow the suit is ""on behalf"" of the other share holders?  Do I have you explanation right?" Jeff Bezos; just like Jobs, Ellison, Zuckerberg, will never understand the plight of their employees.  Their main goal is how much wealth and power they can consolidate for themselves.    The Tech industry in general is a pretty horrible industry; huge profits very little return to the economy.  Unless we vote in better politicians, we will always have to remind tech CEOs that charity begins at home. No necessarily.   Do you bring any unique value to the company other than a sweaty pair of hands?   Did you bring a unique skill, bring in investors, have relationships that are able to get the business off the ground, have intellectual property worth something to the business?  Did you cultivate the unique seeds or strain on your own before the business started?  These are all things one takes into consideration when dividng up shares in a company.  The question you need to ask yourself is could someone else have provided the sweaty hands other than you?  If yes, then unfortunately you provide no unique value to the business and that will be reflected in how share are portioned.   I'm speaking as a co-founder in a Silicon Valley tech company.   I've spent a lot of money with lawyers to understand this.   You should definitely talk to a lawyer. "The story with most companies, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, old GM, etc is that innovation was done by gray individuals or smaller companies and they buy their ideas or simply take those ideas without giving credit to the innovator.  Apples is a good example: the Apple II is Steve Wozniak's idea and creation, and even the iPod and iPhone were ideas and design of few people you never heard of. Steve Jobs was a total failure at anything ""designed by Apple"": the Lisa, Newton, Macintosh, Next and a long list of products of poor design.  Microsoft too: DOS was not written by them, Windows was developed by Xerox, the PC is by 2 people at IBM, Internet Explorer is a copy of Netscape, Excel is a copy of Lotus 123, etc." Oh hey, let's take an insane valuation from the peak of the tech bubble and act like it should be a useful metric. Exxon has a market cap around 430 billion, Apple is just under 600 billion.    Microsoft was never making enough nor looked like it could sustain enough growth to support a 600b market cap.  Don't be stupid.  The stock was grossly overvalued as everything was then. Not the original commenter, but I'm not quite sure how I-baLL's investment in Apple is immature, nor how it affects you. Grow up? For all you know he has a heavy investment in Apple stock and it is important for him to be aware of internal goings-on.   Fanboy bashers are just as bad as the fanboys. Let people enjoy what they want to enjoy, especially when it has zero impact on your life. Yes. Private companies have shares, they're just not liquid and there may be restrictions around selling them; founders get shares when they found a company (not options), as do VCs that invest. An options pool is oftentimes created as a result of a VC financing (when the cap table is being carved up and the existing owners are being diluted, anyway) for the purposes of attracting future employees. Well they’re working on UI and not actual Waymo tech so yeah who cares. Once Apple OS is running in 40% of new self-driving vehicles in 10 years, I doubt my fellow shareholders will be crying too much. The moment the dividend is announced, especially from a company that doesn't normally pay dividends, the dividend is factored into everybody's analysis. In the absence of any other news the price of apple would be expected to drop once the dividend in locked in. Why would I buy shares from you at full price one day after the dividend is paid, if I will have to wait for the next dividend? Also keep in mind the dividend was announced on July 24th, and is given to shareholders of record on August 13th. You are way behind the curve. What percent of a company are you buying when you purchase stock? The percent of a company represented by a single share can be calculated by percent = 1/number_of_shares*100% Apple comprises 5,250,000,000 shares, so one share makes up about 1.9e-8% of a company, or 0.000000019% of Apple.